Firewall compromised: has Friedrich Merz blown ‘democracy’s last shot’?

Many fear chancellor is wrong man for the job at a time when Germany’s defences against far right are crumbling A cataclysm. A bitter rejection of Germany ’s joyous reunification three decades ago, and a threat to the democratic postwar order. Sizing up the repercussions of last weekend’s win for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party in the former communist state of Saxony-Anhalt, German commentators expressed a sense of doom, panic and helplessness in the political establishment. With nearly 44% of the vote, the AfD fell three seats short of an absolute majority. Its media savvy chief candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, is racing to find enough support from the other parties to prop up what would be the first rightwing extremist state government since the Nazi period.

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