In the summer of 2015, chancellor Angela Merkel announced that Syrian war refugees who made it to Germany would not be turned back to the country of first entry into the European Union, as required by the Dublin Regulation. As a result, Syrian refugees in camps along the Balkan route from Turkey to Europe took buses, trains, or marched themselves to German reception centers, where citizens welcomed them. Germany’s asylum bureaucracy, unable to keep up with the rising numbers of applicants, created a fast track for Syrians that provided a three-year temporary humanitarian visa, with eligibility for work, education, and housing, as well as subsequent visa renewal. The events of 2015 contrasted sharply with those of refugees from Lebanon’s civil war in the 1980s. Thousands arrived in then West Germany, many in the divided city of Berlin, and asked for asylum. Most applications were rejected, and those who were allowed to stay ended up in very restricted visa categories that did not permit them to work, go to school, or find legal pathways to integration. Refugees from Lebanon became one of the most marginalized Middle Eastern minority groups in Germany. Next to Germany’s large Turkish minority, which emerged as a result of post-war worker recruitment treaties between states, Arab war refugees and their descendants in Germany have received very little scholarly attention. Based on both archival research and interviews in Germany in the summer of 2015, this paper compares the changing legal landscape for war refugees, and the resulting changes in experiences, as well as perceptions of Arab refugees in Germany. Analyzing the turn from “political” refugees during the Cold War to the “humanitarian” refugee of the 21st century, as well as changing immigration priorities in a unified and demographically challenged Germany, this paper seeks to contrast legal regimes of exclusion and inclusion that have shaped profoundly different identities and experiences for Arab refugees residing in Germany.