Berlin correspondent
Syrian refugee Ryyan Alshebl arrived in Germany in 2015 at the age of 21 as an asylum seeker. Last year he became a naturalised German citizen and on 19th June he will officially take office as mayor of the small town of Ostelsheim (2400 inhabitants), in Baden-Württemberg, where he was elected a few months earlier. The young man who speaks his adopted language perfectly, contests any exemplarity to his career. "What matters is qualification, and my genetic origins do not change my mission and my responsibilities," Ryyan Alshebl told the foreign press. An "ordinary" man, for a history that is normalizing across the Rhine.
In 2022, 168,500 new people were naturalized in Germany according to the statistics institute Destatis, an increase of 28% year-on-year, seven times higher than in 2020. This increase mainly concerns Syrians (+ 29,000), far ahead of...
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