Some German retirees find low-cost refuge in Orban's anti-migrant Hungary

Andre Iwan and his wife moved to a village in Hungary from eastern Germany a few months ago, complaining of high taxes and a feeling that immigration had turned them into "second-class citizens". Iwan, 55, bought a plot of land in 1998 in Szolosgyorok near Lake Balaton - once a favourite meeting place for east and west Germans under communism - with vague plans to retire there.

Andre Iwan and his wife moved to a village in Hungary from eastern Germany a few months ago, complaining of high taxes and a feeling that immigration had turned them into "second-class citizens".

Iwan, 55, bought a plot of land in 1998 in Szolosgyorok near Lake Balaton - once a favourite meeting place for east and west Germans under communism - with vague plans to retire there. However, recent political and social changes in Germany accelerated the move, he said. Thousands of Germans, mostly retired, have settled in Hungary over recent years, lured by cheap housing and low living costs. But there is another draw for some, expats themselves and political analysts say - right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban's hardline anti-immigration rhetoric, widely shared in social media groups dedicated to emigration.

"With the policies that have taken place... with Angela Merkel's 2015 refugee invasion, you could see the situation was getting worse and worse every year," said Iwan, who worked as a construction foreman. "You somehow had the feeling that you were a second-class citizen - only existing to work and to pay."

Former Chancellor Merkel opened Germany's borders in 2015 to more than one million migrants, many of them Syrians, fleeing war and poverty. It won her plaudits abroad but proved controversial at home and eroded some of her political capital. Iwan's language echoes that of right-wing influencers and the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which has scored a series of electoral successes, particularly in the poorer, less diverse east, with its assertion that Germany is overrun by immigrants and is no longer able to control the situation.

The German government has said migrants are vital to the workforce and the economy, though it has pledged to take a tougher line on irregular arrivals. PERCEPTIONS, DISENCHANTMENT

There were some 22,100 Germans living in Hungary in 2022. The numbers arriving peaked in 2021 when 4,036 came, according to Hungarian official data. About half are aged over 60. "For them Hungary is a safe country," said Monika Varadi, a sociologist at Hungary's HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies, who has researched the new arrivals.

"They can live here fairly cheaply, find housing and (they say) there are no migrants ... They perceive the situation in Germany as a crisis." Arrivals in Hungary are dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians who have gone in the opposite direction to study or work in Europe's economic engine-room, and there has been no increase in overall emigration from Germany.

There is no evidence that Hungary is any safer than Germany: crime rates are comparable, and polls show that Hungary, far from being a happier place, shares with Germany among the lowest levels of life satisfaction in Europe. Older people often move to warmer places where their pensions stretch further.

But Hungary's particular image, promoted by its government and widely echoed in Europe's far-right media, of countering Western Europeans' alleged pro-immigration liberalism, might be an added draw, said anthropologist Kristof Szombati of Berlin's Humboldt University. Pro-government media has celebrated the arrival of German emigres as proof of Hungary's success, he added.

"There's a gamut of forces that draw people to Hungary or push them away from Germany, and among those forces, people do mention that they don't like immigration politics in Germany," he said. The pandemic, war, and economic dislocation have all heightened people's sense of uncertainty, fueling a desire to bolt for imagined safety, added Nikolas Lelle of German anti-racism thinktank the Antonio Amadeu Foundation.

Juergen Wichert, from eastern Germany's mountainous Erzgebirge, moved to Hungary in August to the small town of Gyenesdias on Lake Balaton. He wanted to remain close enough to Germany to reach it by car. Wichert sympathises with Orban's conservative policies and welcomed Donald Trump's victory in U.S. elections. "I take a very critical view on the developments in Germany. I believe that many people are still doing too well. And only when the economy sinks further, when the middle class deteriorates again, then perhaps there will be a rethinking and then there can also be a change, as there is now in America." (Writing by Krisztina Than, additional reporting by Thomas Escritt in Berlin, Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

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