A minor upside (because that wasn't the focus of media headlines) was Merkel's support for (figurehead) federal president Christian Wulff. In his speech on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Wulff (who in his prior job as PM of Lower Saxony state installed Germany's first Turkish-German and Muslim education minister) declared:

Das Christentum gehört zweifelsfrei zu Deutschland. Das Judentum gehört zweifelsfrei zu Deutschland. Das ist unsere christlich-jüdische Geschichte. Aber der Islam gehört inzwischen auch zu Deutschland.

Christianity is part of Germany without doubt. Judaism is part of Germany without doubt. However, by now Islam is part of Germany, too.

Of course, Wulff's simple words earned outrage on the right of Merke's CDU and its Bavarian sister the CSU. This was probably the trigger of Horst Seehofer's entry into the "integration" debate.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}