How has the so-called refugee crisis from 2015 changed German national identity? Literature on German national identity suggests various master themes of responsibility, ethnicity, and guilt. While many existing studies have focused on singular snapshots of German identity, few have paid attention to processes of identity change. Moreover, the consequences of the 2015 arrival of refugees for German national identity remain to be studied in detail. This paper explores this question of identity change in the face of crisis through a qualitative content analysis of the most widely read German newspapers - Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Bild - as well as elite speeches on important memorial occasions. We argue that 2015 can be understood as a critical juncture for German national identity as the arrival of immigrants challenges notions of identity, triggering (in)formal boundary-making. Material from the years 2014 and 2019 serves as two reference points for German national identity before and after the arrival of refugees. Based on an inductive analysis of 1790 articles and 25 speeches and the identification of several issue areas, we find that the representation of national identity shifted from a relatively homogenous understanding of Germanness in contrast to European neighbours in 2014 to an increasingly fragmented focus on Others within the country in 2019. Based on these insights, we propose a theoretical framework on mechanisms of identity change in the face of external crisis.
