“CHALLENGING, but not overwhelming” is how Thomas de Maiziere, Germany’s interior minister, described the effects of a surge in refugees on German society this week.

Many Germans, however, do feel overwhelmed. On August 19th Mr de Maiziere unveiled an updated, and stunning, estimate of asylum seekers this year. The government had assumed 450,000 would apply in Germany in 2015, more than twice the number last year. It now expects 800,000, almost four times last year’s total. In a space of weeks, the refugee crisis has thus pushed aside troubles in Greece and Ukraine as Germany’s biggest worry. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, thinks it will “preoccupy” Europe much more than any other crisis.

Germany, in the centre of the European Union (EU), is not the geographical frontline in this drama. That burden falls on Greece and Italy, where the masses wash ashore. But Germany, along with Sweden, is the preferred destination for many asylum seekers in part because it is comparatively liberal. These two countries alone processed 40% of the EU’s asylum applications last year.

In general, Germany feels it must be more welcoming than, say, Britain or the eastern European countries, because of its dark past and its own experience after the second world war, when it was Germans who were refugees. Even now, many Germans embrace the new arrivals warmly. When Sven Latteyer, a bus driver in Bavaria, realised he was driving a group of refugees recently, he spontaneously grabbed his microphone to announce, in English: “Welcome to Germany, welcome to my country.” The entire bus, refugees and Germans alike, broke out in applause. Many refugees feel grateful in return. Ophelya Ade, a refugee from Ghana who gave birth in Hanover this month, named her baby Angela Merkel Ade because the chancellor “is a very good woman”.

Dividing Germany

But increasingly, such welcoming gestures are causing their own backlash. When Til Schweiger, a movie star, called on his Facebook page for private donations to buy and convert a former army barracks into an asylum centre, he was inundated with comments that were vile and racist. Especially in eastern Germany, where locals often have little contact with foreigners, there are incidents of right-wing and neo-Nazi rallies in front of refugee homes, and even arson. The refugees are dividing German society and testing its tolerance.