Originally published 2021-07-18.
On Saturday 17 July 2021, Armin Laschet, the man then expected to follow Angela Merkel as German chancellor, was filmed laughing with people around him in the flood-ravaged town of Erftstadt. In front of him, Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier was giving a sombre statement to the press about the disaster. The images spread within hours, Laschet apologised that same evening, and the moment went on to shadow the rest of his campaign.
The clip only lasts a few seconds, but it landed at the worst possible time: in the middle of the deadliest natural disaster Germany had seen in decades, with hundreds of people still missing. Here is what happened, why it mattered so much, and how the story ended.
The floods behind the scene
Between 12 and 15 July 2021, a slow-moving low-pressure system parked itself over western Europe and dumped extraordinary amounts of rain on Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Some stations recorded more rain in a day or two than they would normally see in a month or more. Reifferscheid in Germany measured 207 mm in nine hours, Cologne 154 mm in 24 hours, and Jalhay in Belgium set a national record of 271.5 mm in 48 hours.
Small rivers that usually trickle through narrow valleys turned into torrents. The Ahr, the Erft, the Kyll, the Vesdre and the Meuse rose within hours, carrying away bridges, cars, railway lines and whole rows of houses. On the Kyll, the water level jumped from about one metre to almost eight.
The worst-hit area was the Ahr valley in the Ahrweiler district of Rhineland-Palatinate, south of Bonn and Cologne. Around 135 people died there, many of them at night as the water rose faster than anyone expected. In North Rhine-Westphalia, Laschet's own state, dozens more were killed.
How many people died
Early counts climbed day by day as rescue teams reached cut-off villages. By the time Laschet was filmed, the confirmed toll across the region was already above 150 and rising. Final figures put the deaths in Germany at more than 180 and in Belgium at 39, with a total of around 240 across Europe. Damage was estimated at about €46 billion, making it one of the costliest disasters in European history. In Germany alone, direct damage was put at more than €33 billion.
For days, entire communities in Rhineland-Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia were without power, drinking water, mobile phone signal or road access. In Erftstadt-Blessem, the ground gave way beside a gravel pit and swallowed houses and cars, creating one of the most shocking images of the whole disaster. That was where the president and the state premier went on 17 July.
What the cameras caught in Erftstadt
Steinmeier and Laschet toured the damage in Erftstadt together. Afterwards the president stepped up to address reporters, speaking about the dead, the missing and the people who had lost everything. Laschet stood a few metres behind him with local officials and aides.
While Steinmeier was speaking, cameras captured Laschet turning to the people next to him, chatting and laughing openly. Nobody heard what the conversation was about, and there is no suggestion that he was laughing at the victims. But the contrast between the president's grave words and the candidate's laughter in the background was stark, and broadcasters and social media users shared the footage widely.
Context matters here. A camera shows behaviour, not the whole story: brief moments of relief or nervous laughter happen among people under strain, including at funerals. Still, politicians at disaster sites know they are being filmed, and voters judge them on how they look in exactly these moments.
The backlash and the apology
Criticism came quickly from across the political spectrum. Lars Klingbeil, general secretary of the Social Democrats, told Bild am Sonntag that the behaviour was lacking in decency and appalling
, adding that a person's character shows in a crisis. Commentators from Laschet's own conservative camp also called the scene a serious error.
Laschet responded on Twitter that evening. He thanked Steinmeier for the visit, said the fate of the people affected mattered to him, and regretted the impression created by a conversation on the sidelines. He called his behaviour inappropriate and said he was sorry. Later he summed it up more bluntly, calling the scene stupid
and something that should not have happened.
The apology was quick and unambiguous, but it could not stop the images from circulating. For many voters who knew little else about Laschet, those few seconds became the defining picture of him.
Why the moment hurt him so much
Timing made the scene especially damaging. Laschet was not only the CDU leader and candidate for chancellor; as minister-president of North Rhine-Westphalia, he was directly responsible for the crisis response in one of the two worst-hit states. Voters were watching him less as a campaigner and more as the person in charge.
Before the floods, the CDU/CSU alliance led the national polls comfortably, ahead of the Greens, with the Social Democrats in third place. In the weeks afterwards, Laschet's personal ratings fell sharply. Surveys showed widespread dissatisfaction with how he had handled the flood crisis, and the Erftstadt footage was widely seen as a turning point. By late August, the SPD under Olaf Scholz had overtaken the Union for the first time in years.
Scholz, then finance minister, used the disaster to present himself as a calm manager, promising rapid aid to flood victims. The contrast between the two men became a central theme of the campaign.
The election result and what came after
At the federal election on 26 September 2021, the SPD won 25.7% of the vote and the CDU/CSU 24.1%, the Union's worst result in its history. Laschet accepted personal responsibility for the defeat. The SPD formed a coalition with the Greens and the liberal FDP, and on 8 December 2021 the Bundestag elected Olaf Scholz chancellor.
Laschet announced his withdrawal from the party leadership in October 2021 and left the post of minister-president that month to take up his seat in the Bundestag. Friedrich Merz won the CDU leadership contest in December 2021. Laschet stayed in parliament and later became chair of the Bundestag's foreign affairs committee.
No single clip decides an election. Laschet also faced a bruising contest with Markus Söder for the candidacy, doubts about his campaign and the general fatigue after 16 years of Merkel. Yet the laughter in Erftstadt is still the image most Germans remember from that summer, and it is often cited as a lesson in how quickly a campaign can turn.
Climate change and the 2021 floods
Within weeks of the disaster, the World Weather Attribution group, an international team of climate scientists, studied the rainfall. They concluded that human-caused warming had made such extreme one-day downpours in the region between 1.2 and 9 times more likely, and 3 to 19% more intense, than in a climate 1.2 °C cooler. They estimated that a rainfall event of this size might hit any given place in the wider region roughly once every 400 years in today's climate.
That is a careful finding, not a claim that climate change alone caused the floods. Steep valleys, building on flood plains and gaps in the warning chain also played a large part. The European Flood Awareness System had sent alerts days in advance, but many residents in the Ahr valley were never told clearly to leave. Investigations afterwards focused on how warnings were passed down to local authorities and the public.
The floods did push climate policy higher up the agenda during the campaign. The Greens gained ground in the election, taking 14.8% of the vote, their best federal result at the time, and entered government as part of the new coalition.
Lessons for leaders at disaster sites
- Everything is on camera. At a disaster site, there is no off-stage area. Every expression can become the story.
- Apologise fast and plainly. Laschet did this, and it limited the damage, but it could not erase the footage.
- Action matters more than appearance in the long run. Voters also judged leaders on aid, rebuilding and warnings, which took months and years to unfold.
- Warning systems save lives. The biggest lesson of July 2021 was not about one politician but about getting clear, timely warnings to people in danger.
Rebuilding in the Ahr valley took years, with bridges, railway lines and homes reconstructed bit by bit. For the people who lived through the floods, the real story of 2021 is the loss of neighbours and homes, and the long work of starting again.
Sources: Wikipedia: 2021 European floods; Wikipedia: Armin Laschet; Associated Press via ClickOnDetroit, 18 July 2021: German candidate sorry for laughing scene in flood visit; World Weather Attribution: Heavy rainfall which led to severe flooding in Western Europe made more likely by climate change; Al Jazeera photo gallery, 18 July 2021 (original report).
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