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I think there are three simple reasons for the patience or tolerance that you mention:

1. For a country of 81 million, the average refugee/immigration trend up until 2014, was roughly 250,000 a year. They had built their “door” to handle that, and with the exception of the Balkins period, that was the norm.

2. Population replacement isn’t going well. Private foundations, universities and the gov’t all admit that within 25 years...the 81 million population number will shrink to 65-to-68 million. This worries industry, the pension control folks, gov’t idiots, and just about everyone. They can’t fix this, so the logical trend is to accept immigration. Even I would agree...some immigration through a controlled door...is helpful. So they were hopeful.

3. The bulk of society in Germany bought off on excuses and the lame work of the state run news media for months, even when the anti-immigration crowd was trying to hype various issues. All went marginally well in the gov’t favor....until 31 Dec 2015, on New Year’s Eve in Koln. Then “something” hit the fan. With about a thousand women reporting sexual assault around Koln (lesser so in four other cites that night)...then the state-run news media delayed talking about this for about five days...that finished off the general patience of Germans.

Since mid-January....state elections and the big city-election episode across Germany, have demonstrated a trend for AfD (around 15-to-20 percent). They don’t have real money, and they’ve relied upon only five or six decent talking guys to really carry their message. In each state, they’ve got support now.

So we come to your question on Merkel and support now. If you ask about positive or negative feelings for Merkel herself....about 50-percent of the nation is positive, 10-percent neutral and 40-percent either mildly negative or very negative. As a leader, she has shown what you’d call the natural tendency of a professor in a lab experiment....”let’s not rush into doing something hasty”-attitude.

She hasn’t made a bunch of stupid mistakes and had any corruption at all. She hasn’t had to fire anyone because she vets folks and demands accountability.

Up until this past three years....she was considered an outstanding Chancellor (probably second best since WW II ended).

Polling for the six political parties and the fall 2017 election trend: (roughly)

CDU (right-center party, Merkel’s party): 32 percent
SPD (left-center party): 20 percent
Linke Party (former Communist Party of DDR): 9 percent
Green Party: 14 percent
FDP (anti-taxation, responsible spending party): 5 percent
AfD (anti-immigration, etc): 15 percent

The rest are split among 40 marginal parties.

Note within this....as AfD grows, they take votes from the CDU, the SPD, and the Linke Party (strangely enough). Last month, the neo-Nazi Party in one eastern state were standing down now and telling their people to vote only for the AfD.

Here’s the two curious things. (1) The center-right and center-left parties have always had 65-percent to 85 percent of the national vote between them since 1949. If you add up the numbers now...they will barely get to 50-percent. That worries alot of people....the public isn’t voting center-left-right anymore. (2) To lead a gov’t, as the winner in the election, you have to have 50-percent of the vote or form a coalition with one or two partners. With the AfD there, no one will form partners with them, but this is forcing for strange politics when the right-leaning party (CDU) has to partner with the SPD and maybe even the Green Party, to lead the government.

Next big episodes? Two state elections in Sep and Oct. Then you have three state elections in Apr and May of next year. These will all show trends. Merkel is bowing out but it’s questionable what kind of government leads Germany after that fall 2017 election.

Remember....Nov 1932....the Nazi Party only needed 37-percent to win, and after that....nothing worked well again.