“Germany! Germany!”

IN THE end, it was not the hell that they came from that mattered. It was the hope their destination inspired. “Germany! Germany!” the refugees chanted on the crowded platform of a Budapest train station, and Germany heard them. Many in the country, like many around the world, had been moved to a new level of compassion for Syria’s refugees by pictures of Alan Kurdi, a little boy washed up dead on a Turkish shore. Many more had felt shame as neo-Nazis set fire to some asylum homes. But what mattered most were the goose bumps the nation got as they saw that throng chanting.

For 70 years the Germans have atoned for their dark past and yearned to be seen as good. Hearing their name cried out neither in fear nor in a football stadium but in gratitude and hope touched the public enough to turn them, at least for now, in favour of a Willkommenskultur (“welcome culture”). Catching the mood, Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, declared an “exception” to EU asylum rules, allowing the refugees bottled up in Hungary out through Austria into Germany. More than 20,000 arrived in the first weekend of September alone—about as many as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron, has just pledged to take in over the next five years. Thousands of Germans turned out to welcome the newcomers in Munich, Dortmund and other cities with sweets and toys and smiles.

Germany was already doing more than its fair share. It takes 40% of the EU’s refugees. 413,000 applied for asylum in Germany in the first eight months of 2015 and 800,000 are expected to do so over the full year. No matter; for now, the people want to do more. A recent opinion poll shows that the share of Germans who want to accept as many or more refugees as have come so far has increased from 57% to 59% since August; 96% feel that all those fleeing war or violence are entitled to asylum.

Celebrities are volunteering to help. Corporate bosses are demanding that rules be loosened so that they can hire refugees as apprentices or workers. Even sport has got in on the act. Bayern Munich, the country’s richest football club, will donate €1m ($1.12m) to the cause. When its players walk out on to the pitch to play FC Augsburg on September 12th each will be holding hands with both a refugee child and a German one.

If foreigners see Mrs Merkel as leading in this crisis, Germans see her instead as following her electorate, as is her wont. During the summer the hashtag #Merkelschweigt (“Merkel is silent”) trended on Twitter. Now, though, she leaves no doubt about her commitment. On September 7th she thanked the many citizens who welcome the refugees and “can make us rather proud of our country”. She said she was “moved” that Germany has become a land of hope, especially in view of its past, and that she knows “that this is not about me but about this country and the people here, the many who stand at the train stations, the many who give welcome.”

That said, the Willkommenskultur is not universal. Within Mrs Merkel’s governing coalition, she speaks only for her own Christian Democrats (CDU). Her centre-left partners, the Social Democrats, are even more liberal on the issue. But the conservative Christian Social Union, which exists only in Bavaria, takes a harder line. It criticised Mrs Merkel’s snap decision to let in trains from Hungary. And it wants a tougher approach toward those whom it sees as undeserving, which it thinks would keep numbers down.

But on September 6th these three coalition partners hammered out a sweeping compromise. To meet the logistical crisis, the federal government will spend an additional €6 billion. Add in extra spending at other levels and the total could be €10 billion. At the same time, Germany will replace cash handouts to refugees with vouchers for food, clothes and housing. It will process asylum applications faster—in weeks rather than months—and swiftly repatriate those who are rejected. This will mostly affect the Balkan applicants, who nowadays tend to be fleeing poverty rather than violence and discrimination. Germany wants to declare Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro as “safe”. At the same time—in a concession to the Social Democrats—Germany will open an alternative legal route by which economic migrants from the Balkans can enter the German labour market. All these changes are to be finalised this month and passed by parliament in October.

But Germany’s biggest political push will be to reform the EU’s rules so that all member states share refugees based on a binding quota system. This vision is aligned with the plan that Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, proposed on September 9th (see article). Domestically, Germany already has a working prototype: it allocates refugees among the 16 federal states according to population and economic strength. Thus mighty North-Rhine Westphalia takes the most and tiny Bremen the fewest. In this campaign, Germany has the support of Sweden, Austria and now France, as well as Italy and Greece, where most of the refugees first come ashore. But it faces opposition from other countries, notably in the east.

For now most Germans are staying focused on the logistics of housing all the refugees they have welcomed in. Tent cities that have sprung up, sometimes in one day, must be converted to permanent housing before winter. Social tensions will inevitably arise along the way. But the refugees recognise and appreciate the effort, and many are finding ways to say thank you. When Ophelya Ade, now living in a shelter in Lower Saxony, recently gave birth to a girl, she named the baby Angela Merkel Ade. The chancellor, she explained, “is a very good woman. I like her.”