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      La extrema derecha vuelve a la carga en Alemania

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      Mientras los alemanes se enfrentan a una era de turbulencias políticas y económicas, el partido Alternativa para Alemania resurge. Los políticos tradicionales se esfuerzan por reaccionar.Las mesas estaban abarrotadas en el Waldhaus, un restaurante en las afueras boscosas de una ciudad del este de Alemania, mientras los habituales —trabajadores estrechando manos callosas, jubiladas agarrando carteras en su regazo— se acomodaban para una reunión de bar de la ultraderechista Alternativa para Alemania.Pero los incondicionales preocupan menos a los dirigentes políticos alemanes que personas como Ina Radzheit. Ella, agente de seguros con una blusa floreada, se coló entre bandejas de schnitzel y cervezas espumosas en su primera visita a la AfD, las iniciales alemanas con las que se conoce al partido.“¿Qué pasa?”, dijo. “¿Por dónde empiezo?”. Se siente insegura con el aumento de la inmigración. Le incomoda que Alemania suministre armas a Ucrania. Está exasperada por las disputas del gobierno sobre planes climáticos que teme que costarán a ciudadanos como ella su modesto pero cómodo modo de vida.“No puedo decir ahora si alguna vez votaré por la AfD”, dijo. “Pero estoy escuchando”.A medida que la preocupación por el futuro de Alemania crece, parece que también lo hace la AfD.La AfD ha alcanzado su punto más alto en las encuestas en los antiguos estados comunistas del este de Alemania, donde ahora es el partido líder, atrayendo a alrededor de un tercio de los votantes. En el oeste, más rico, está subiendo. A nivel nacional, está codo a codo con los socialdemócratas del canciller Olaf Scholz.Si la tendencia se mantiene, la AfD podría representar su amenaza más seria para la política alemana tradicional desde 2017, cuando se convirtió en el primer partido de extrema derecha en entrar en el Parlamento desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial.El giro es sorprendente para un partido cuyos obituarios políticos llenaban los medios alemanes hace un año, tras haberse hundido en las elecciones nacionales. Y refleja el malestar de un país en una encrucijada.Residentes locales llegan a una reunión de la AfD en el restaurante Waldhaus en Gera, Alemania.Lena Mucha para The New York TimesTras décadas de prosperidad de posguerra, Alemania lucha por transformar su modelo industrial exportador del siglo XX en una economía digitalizada capaz de resistir el cambio climático y la competencia de potencias como China.“Vivimos en un mundo de agitación global”, dijo Rene Springer, legislador nacional de AfD, en su intervención en el Waldhaus de Gera. “Nuestra responsabilidad para con nuestros hijos es dejarles algún día una situación mejor que la nuestra. Eso ya no es de esperar”.Cuando fue elegida en 2021, la coalición de tres partidos de Scholz prometió conducir a Alemania a través de una transformación dolorosa pero necesaria. En cambio, el país se sumió en una incertidumbre más profunda por la invasión rusa de Ucrania.Al principio, la coalición parecía vencer a los pronósticos: los aliados elogiaban su promesa de sustituir el pacifismo de posguerra por una revitalización militar. Encontró alternativas al gas ruso barato —casi el 50 por ciento de su suministro— con una rapidez inesperada.Pero entonces el país entró en recesión. Las cifras de migración alcanzaron máximos históricos, impulsadas sobre todo por los refugiados ucranianos. Y la coalición empezó a luchar entre sí sobre cómo retomar el rumbo marcado para Alemania antes de la guerra.La AfD, un partido que atrajo apoyos sobre todo al criticar la migración, encontró un nuevo atractivo como defensor de la clase económicamente precaria de Alemania.“Con la migración, la AfD ofreció una narrativa cultural y una identidad a quienes estaban ansiosos por su futuro”, dijo Johannes Hillje, un politólogo alemán que estudia la AfD. “Ahora, la amenaza cultural no viene solo de fuera, sino de dentro, es decir, de la política de transformación del gobierno”.Una manifestación de la AfD sobre seguridad energética e inflación, en las afueras del edificio del Reichstag en Berlín, en octubre.Christoph Soeder/DPA, vía Associated PressLa AfD ha resurgido a pesar de que los servicios de inteligencia nacionales la clasifican como organización “sospechosa” de extrema derecha, lo que permite ponerla bajo vigilancia. Su rama en Turingia, donde se celebró la reunión de Waldhaus, está clasificada como extremista “confirmada”.Un mes antes, su rama juvenil nacional también fue clasificada como extremista confirmada, aunque esa etiqueta fue retirada hace poco mientras se resuelve en la corte un caso sobre su estatus.En el informe anual de la agencia nacional de inteligencia en abril, el líder de la agencia, Thomas Haldenwang, indicó que se cree que de los 28.500 integrantes de la AfD, alrededor de 10.000 son extremistas.Sin embargo, un tercio de los alemanes la consideran un “partido democrático normal”, según Hillje. “La paradoja es que, al mismo tiempo, cada vez está más claro que se trata realmente de un partido radical, si no extremista”.En años anteriores, el partido parecía dispuesto a dejar de lado a las figuras extremas. Ahora ya no. Este mes de abril, la colíder Alice Wiedel habló junto a Björn Höcke, líder del partido en Turingia y uno de los políticos considerado entre los más radicales de la AfD.Höcke fue acusado recientemente por la fiscalía estatal por utilizar la frase “todo para Alemania” en un mitin, un eslogan de las tropas de asalto nazis.Nada de eso empañó el entusiasmo en el Waldhaus de Gera, una ciudad de unos 93.000 habitantes en el este de Turingia, donde la AfD es el partido más popular.Anke Wettengel, maestra de escuela, dijo que esas etiquetas equivalen a centrarse en los hinchas de un equipo de fútbol, y no reflejan a los seguidores normales, como ella.Tampoco veía ningún problema en lo dicho por Höcke.“Fue una frase muy normal”, dijo. “Hoy se nos debería permitir estar orgullosos de nuestro país sin ser acusados inmediatamente de extremistas”.Desde el escenario, Springer arremetió no solo contra las reformas laborales para los inmigrantes, calificándolas de “sistema traidor contra los ciudadanos nativos”, sino que también criticó las nuevas medidas climáticas.La audiencia golpeó sus mesas en señal de aprobación.Una sesión de preguntas y respuestas para simpatizantes de la AfD y residentes locales en el Waldhaus, en Gera. La ciudad ubicada en el este de Turingia es una de las muchas que están experimentando un incremento en el apoyo al partido en todo el país.Lena Mucha para The New York TimesStefan Brandner, representante de la AfD en Gera, compartió estadísticas que, según él, vinculaban de manera abrumadora a los extranjeros con asesinatos y entregas de alimentos, lo que provocó exclamaciones en la multitud.Muchos invitados afirmaron que son estos “hechos reales” los que los atrajeron a los eventos de la AfD. (El gobierno federal escribió en un documento que proporcionaba estadísticas a la AfD, que los datos no eran lo suficientemente sustanciales como para sacar tales conclusiones).Los analistas políticos afirman que los principales partidos de Alemania comparten la culpa por el ascenso de la AfD. La coalición de Scholz no logró comunicar de manera convincente sus planes de transformación y, en cambio, pareció enfrascarse en batallas internas sobre cómo llevarlos a cabo.Sus tradicionales opositores conservadores, entre ellos la Unión Demócrata Cristiana de la excanciller Angela Merkel, se están acercando a las posturas de la AfD con la esperanza de recuperar votantes.Están adoptando la estrategia de la AfD de antagonizar el lenguaje neutro de género, así como posturas más duras sobre la migración. Algunos líderes demócratas cristianos incluso están pidiendo eliminar los derechos de asilo de la constitución de Alemania.Los partidarios de la AfD han notado que sus puntos de vista se han ido normalizando incluso cuando los rivales han intentado marginar al partido, y eso hace que sea más difícil para los partidos tradicionales recuperar su confianza.“Se están radicalizando”, aseveró Julia Reuschenbach, politóloga de la Universidad Libre de Berlín. “Ningún grupo de votantes principales es tan inaccesible como los de la AfD”.Björn Höcke, uno de los líderes del partido en Turingia y considerado uno de los políticos más radicales de la AfD, marchando en un mitin en Turingia el mes pasado.Martin Schutt/Picture Alliance, vía Getty ImagesLa semana pasada, el Instituto Alemán por los Derechos Humanos, una organización financiada por el Estado, publicó un estudio que argumenta que el lenguaje y las tácticas utilizadas por la AfD “para lograr sus objetivos racistas y extremistas de derecha” podrían reunir las condiciones para inhabilitar el partido por ser un “peligro para el orden democrático libre”.Sin embargo, estas propuestas le generan otro dilema a la sociedad democrática: las herramientas que tiene Alemania para luchar contra el partido que ve como una amenaza son las mismas que refuerzan los sentimientos entre los partidarios de la AfD de que su país no es realmente democrático.“¿Cómo es posible que una organización financiada por el Estado se pronuncie e intente estigmatizar a una parte significativa de sus votantes?” preguntó Springer en una entrevista.Es una pregunta a la que aquellos en la multitud, como Wettengel, han encontrado respuestas inquietantes.“La política tradicional está en contra de la gente”, aseguró. “No a favor de la gente”.La verdadera prueba del apoyo a la AfD no llegará sino hasta el próximo año, cuando varios estados del este de Alemania celebren elecciones y tenga una posibilidad de llevarse la mayor parte de los votos.Mientras tanto, todas las semanas, los políticos de la AfD se despliegan por todo el país, organizan mesas de información, noches de encuentros en pub y conversaciones con ciudadanos, como si ya estuvieran en campaña electoral.Fuera de la estación de tren de Hennigsdorf, un suburbio de Berlín, el legislador estatal de la AfD, Andreas Galau, repartía folletos a los visitantes con una sonrisa inquebrantable. Algunos transeúntes le gritaban insultos. Otros tenían curiosidad.“Muchos vienen aquí solo para desahogar sus frustraciones”, dijo, con una sonrisa. “Vienen y nos dicen lo que sienten. Somos una especie de grupo de terapia”.Cada vez más personas, aseguró, ya no se avergüenzan de mostrar interés en la AfD. La sensación de que la política tradicional no está escuchando al ciudadano común es lo que podría estar ayudando a llenar las filas de la AfD.En Gera, el discurso que Springer pronunció frente a la multitud parecía un ejercicio de catarsis y validación.“Ellos creen que somos estúpidos”, dijo. “Se lo pensarán de nuevo cuando lleguen las próximas elecciones”. More

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      Germany’s Far Right AfD Party Stages a Comeback

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      With Germans facing an era of political and economic turbulence, the Alternative for Germany is resurgent. Mainstream politicians are struggling to respond.The tables were packed at the Waldhaus, a restaurant on the wooded outskirts of an east German town, as the regulars — workers shaking calloused hands, retirees clutching purses in their lap — settled in for a pub gathering of the far-right Alternative for Germany.But the die-hards worry Germany’s political leadership less than people like Ina Radzheit. An insurance agent in a flowered blouse, she squeezed in among platters of schnitzel and frothy beers for her first visit to the AfD, the German initials by which the party is known.“What’s wrong?” she said. “Where do I start?” She feels unsafe with migration rising. She is uncomfortable with Germany providing weapons to Ukraine. She is exasperated by government squabbling over climate plans she fears will cost citizens like her their modest but comfortable way of life.“I can’t say now if I would ever vote for the AfD,” she said. “But I am listening.”As anxieties over Germany’s future rise, so too, it seems, does the AfD.The AfD has reached a polling high in Germany’s formerly Communist eastern states, where it is now the leading party, drawing around a third of voters. It is edging up in the wealthier west. Nationally, it is polling neck and neck with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.If the trend lasts, the AfD could present its most serious threat to Germany’s political establishment since 2017, when it became the first far-right party to enter Parliament since World War II.The turnabout is surprising for a party whose political obituaries filled the German media a year ago, after it had sunk in national elections. And it reflects the unease of a country at a crossroads.Locals arriving for an AfD meeting at the Waldhaus restaurant in Gera, Germany.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesAfter decades of postwar prosperity, Germany is struggling to transform its 20th-century industrial exporting model into a digitized economy that can withstand climate change and competition from powers like China.“We are living in a world of global upheaval,” said Rene Springer, the national AfD lawmaker speaking at the Waldhaus in Gera. “Our responsibility to our children is to one day leave them better off than we are. That’s no longer to be expected.”When it was elected in 2021, Mr. Scholz’s three-party coalition vowed to lead Germany through a painful but necessary transformation. Instead, the country was plunged into deeper uncertainty by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.At first, the coalition seemed to beat the odds: Allies praised its pledge to overwrite postwar pacifism with military revitalization. It found alternatives to cheap Russian gas — nearly 50 percent of its supply — with unexpected speed.But then the country dipped into recession. Migration numbers reached all-time highs, mostly driven by Ukrainian refugees. And the coalition began fighting among itself over how to return to the course it set for Germany before the war.The AfD, a party that mostly drew support by criticizing migration, found new appeal as defender of Germany’s economically precarious class.“With migration, the AfD offered a cultural narrative and identity to those anxious about their future,” said Johannes Hillje, a German political scientist who studies the AfD. “Now, the cultural threat is coming not just from the outside, but within — that is, the transformation policy of the government.”An AfD demonstration on energy security and inflation, outside of the Reichstag in Berlin in October.Christoph Soeder/DPA, via Associated PressThe AfD has resurged despite domestic intelligence classifying it a “suspected” right-wing extremist organization, allowing it to be put under surveillance. Its branch in Thuringia, where the Waldhaus gathering was held, is classified as “confirmed” extremist.A month earlier, its national youth wing was also classified confirmed extremist, though that label was recently lifted as a case regarding its status is settled in the courts.In April, the domestic intelligence agency head, Thomas Haldenwang, said in the agency’s yearly report that of 28,500 AfD members, around 10,000 are believed to be extremists.Yet a full third of Germans now view it as a “normal democratic party,” Mr. Hillje said. “The paradox is that, at the same time, it has become more and more clear that this is really a radical party, if not an extremist party.”In previous years, the party seemed ready to sideline extreme figures. No longer. This April, co-leader Alice Weidel spoke alongside Björn Höcke, party leader in Thuringia and seen as one of the AfD’s most radical politicians.Mr. Höcke was recently charged by state prosecutors for using the phrase “everything for Germany” at a rally — a Nazi Storm Trooper slogan.None of that dampened the enthusiasm at the Waldhaus in Gera, a town of about 93,000 in eastern Thuringia, where the AfD is the most popular party.Anke Wettengel, a schoolteacher, called such labels the equivalent of focusing on hooligan fans of a soccer team — not a reflection of normal supporters, like her.Nor did she see a problem with Mr. Höcke’s language.“That was a very normal sentence,” she said. “We should be allowed to be proud of our country today without immediately being accused of being extremists.”From the stage, Mr. Springer railed against not only immigrant labor reforms, calling them a “traitorous system against native citizens,” but also criticized new climate measures.The audience thumped their tables in approval.A question-and-answer session for AfD supporters and locals at the Waldhaus in Gera. The town in eastern Thuringia is one of many seeing a rise in support of the party across the country.Lena Mucha for The New York TimesStefan Brandner, Gera’s AfD representative, shared statistics that he said overwhelmingly linked foreigners to murders and food handouts, eliciting gasps from the crowd.Many guests said it is such “real facts” that drew them to AfD events. (The federal government wrote in a document providing statistics to the AfD that the data was not substantial enough for such conclusions.)Political analysts say Germany’s main parties share the blame for the AfD’s rise. Mr. Scholz’s coalition failed to convincingly communicate its transformation plans — and instead appeared locked in internal battles over how to carry them out.Their mainstream conservative opponents, including the Christian Democrats of former Chancellor Angela Merkel, are edging closer to AfD positions, hoping to regain voters themselves.They are adopting the AfD’s antagonism to gender-neutral language, as well as tougher stances on migration. Some Christian Democratic leaders are even calling to remove asylum rights in Germany’s constitution.AfD supporters have noticed their views becoming normalized even as rivals try to marginalize the party — and that makes it more difficult for mainstream parties to regain their trust.“They are getting hardened,” said Julia Reuschenbach, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin. “No group of core voters is as unreachable as those of the AfD.”Björn Höcke, a party leader in Thuringia and one of the AfD’s most radical politicians, marching at a rally in Thuringia last month. Martin Schutt/Picture Alliance, via Getty ImagesLast week, the German Institute for Human Rights, a state-funded organization, released a study arguing that the language and tactics used by the AfD “to achieve its racist and right-wing extremist goals” could meet conditions for banning the party as a “danger to the free democratic order.”Yet such proposals create another dilemma for democratic society: The tools Germany has for fighting the party it sees as a threat are the same that reinforce sentiments among AfD supporters that their country is not actually democratic.“How can it be that an organization funded by the state can stand up and try to stigmatize a significant part of its voters?” Mr. Springer asked in an interview.It is a question to which those in the crowd, like Ms. Wettengel, have found unsettling answers.“Mainstream politics are against the people,” she said. “Not for the people.”The real test of AfD support won’t come until next year, when several east German states hold elections and it has a chance at taking the largest share of the vote.In the meantime, every week, AfD politicians fan out across the country, hosting information booths, pub nights and citizen dialogues, as if it already were campaign season.Outside the train station of Hennigsdorf, a Berlin suburb, the state AfD lawmaker Andreas Galau handed out pamphlets to visitors with an unwavering smile. Some passers-by shouted insults. Others were curious.“Many come here just to get their frustrations off their chest,” he said with a chuckle. “They come and tell us what is on their minds — we’re a bit of a therapy group.”More and more people, he said, no longer feel ashamed to show interest in the AfD. It is this sense that the political establishment is not listening to ordinary people that may be helping fill out the AfD’s ranks.In Gera, Mr. Springer’s address to the crowd seemed an exercise in catharsis and validation.“They think we are stupid,” he said. “They’ll think again when the next elections come.” More

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      A Pillar of the European Order Has Collapsed

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      The drubbing inflicted on Germany’s Christian Democratic Union in the country’s recent elections is a sign that, alongside Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 16-year stint in power, something larger is coming to an end.Aside from NATO, the Christian Democratic Union is the most venerable postwar political institution in continental Europe. It has led Germany, usually in coalition, for all but 20 years of the country’s post-Nazi political history. Focused on economic growth, Christian traditions, anti-Communism and maintenance of the Atlantic alliance, the party was a guarantee to Germany’s allies that Europe’s largest, richest country would be stable and dependable. With the measly 24 percent of the vote that Ms. Merkel’s successor, Armin Laschet, managed to win, the C.D.U. can no longer play that role. A pillar of the European order has collapsed.The C.D.U.’s decline has been underway since at least the turn of the century. While Ms. Merkel managed to disguise it, she showed little aptitude for reversing it. In the five elections since 2005, when she took power, her party’s vote share fell in all but one.Perhaps not every country needs a “people’s party” of the center-right. Big gainers in this election included Greens worried about climate change and Free Democrats worried about supply chains — two preoccupations that didn’t exist at the time of the C.D.U.’s founding. But there has always been more at stake for the party than an up-to-date servicing to voter preferences. In light of Germany’s Nazi past, it fell to the C.D.U. to play a moderating role — to speak to the patriotic longings of ordinary Germans in a way that would dissuade them from drifting to the political fringes.This role was almost constitutional. Half a century ago, Franz Josef Strauss, leader of the C.D.U.’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, justified his own rock-ribbed conservatism by saying it came with a guarantee that “no legitimate political party” could exist to his party’s right. Many felt they could trust Mr. Strauss to police the country’s rightmost ideological boundary.But in electoral politics, or game theory, or whatever you want to call it, there is a fallacy in such an arrangement. Ms. Merkel was not slow in discovering it: If there really were no legitimate viewpoints to the right of the C.D.U., then the party’s optimal strategy would be to move ever leftward, which it could do with no fear of an alternative right-wing party ever outflanking it.And this is what Ms. Merkel did, whether out of idealism or calculation. In the wake of the Fukushima meltdown of 2011, she announced an exit from nuclear power, long sought by the Greens. In 2015, she joined Social Democrats in passing a minimum wage. In 2017, she secured a vote legalizing gay marriage (without voting for it herself). Most crucially, in 2015, she announced that Germany would welcome hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing the war in Syria, creating a continentwide political crisis that, among other consequences, arguably drove Britain out of the European Union.The effect on German politics was unnerving. The Alternative for Germany party, up to that point a wonkish group obsessed with the European Union’s monetary policy, changed its focus to immigration in July 2015. The following March — eight months before Donald Trump’s election — the party harvested 13, 15 and 24 percent of the vote in state elections. In 2017, Alternative for Germany, now well-established on the C.D.U.’s right, not only sent nearly 100 members to the Bundestag, it also became the leading opposition party. It appeared that Ms. Merkel was heedlessly allowing votes to “drain” out of her own party into an American-style populism.Ms. Merkel, of course, is not the first conservative politician to poach voters from her progressive opponents. But certain problems come predictably with this strategy. The leader benefits more than the party’s rank and file, because the landscape of progressive issues is foreign territory to them. In last month’s rout, things that Christian Democrats might ordinarily have talked about and rallied kindred spirits around — Covid-19, migrants, the euro — were suddenly off limits. The rank and file fell silent. In last week’s rout, the C.D.U. lost half its voters from the previous election. Fewer than 3 percent defected to Alternative for Germany. The lion’s share went to the Social Democrats, the Free Democrats and the Greens.Now German politics has become less predictable. The Green delegation in the Bundestag has nearly doubled. Many of the newcomers are people who have never been in elected office before, giving them something in common with upstart European parties, like the Five Star Movement in Italy and LREM in France, and with Democrats in the United States on the arrival of their progressive wing after 2018. The Social Democrats are young, too. This year they took Ms. Merkel’s seat, which will go to Anna Kassautzki, a 27-year-old self-described feminist and environmentalist who wasn’t born when Ms. Merkel was first elected.Certainly some traditional German conservatives deplore Ms. Merkel’s legacy. But there was one sense in which she was mostly in continuity with her predecessors — her resistance to utopianism. Germany’s society, economy and (since Covid-19) health care system have lately performed more efficiently than those of its neighbors. The great achievement of Ms. Merkel was to understand that in the global economy, efficiency is often a synonym for vulnerability. Like a lot of its best machinery, Germany is both high-functioning and delicate.Many Germany watchers forget this. Ms. Merkel pushed her country’s relatively generous “social market economy” to do a lot more — to offer a reasonable minimum wage, to accept the burden of educating and assimilating millions of desperate immigrants from the Syrian war, and to do those things while promising to forgo the relatively cheap energy that nuclear power provides. She assented to the creation of European Union bonds — a perennial taboo in her party — to finance an emergency Covid-19 package.She was conservative mostly in what she did not do. She realized that Germany does not have the resources to do everything. It cannot underwrite the debts of other European countries, as many of Germany’s southern neighbors assume. It cannot dismantle its existing carbon-based energy system as quickly as Greens would wish — that would pose significant direct transitional costs and indirectly undermine the auto industry that is the linchpin of its manufacturing system. It cannot sever all contact with economies that American boycott enthusiasts deem boogeymen. It cannot say no to Nord Stream II (the pipeline that permits cheap energy from Russia) nor can it revisit its manufacturing arrangements with the “illiberal democracies” of Poland, Hungary and Slovakia.Overindulging a country’s virtues can be as dangerous as overindulging its vices. More than her predecessors Ms. Merkel ran the risk of exposing Germany to instability — in her case, to an American-style class conflict between the beneficiaries and the outcasts of the global economy. She avoided the worst. But she had some close calls, and the shrinking of Germany’s great, stabilizing bourgeois party is bound to reduce her successors’ room for error.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      German Election Leaves Merkel’s Conservatives in Disarray

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      Sunday’s defeat has revealed a gasping conservative party. But what that means for Germany’s future is not clear as traditional left-right politics are scrambled.BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel was standing two paces behind Armin Laschet, her party’s candidate to succeed her, stony-faced and with her hands clenched. The first election results had just come in. The conservative camp had collapsed by 9 percentage points, the Social Democrats were winning — and Mr. Laschet was vowing to do “everything” to form the next government.To watch the scene on Sunday night at conservative party headquarters was to watch power melt away in real time.Germany’s once-mighty Christian Democratic Union is not used to losing. Five of eight postwar chancellors were conservatives and the current one is leaving office after 16 years as the most popular politician in the country.But Sunday’s defeat, the worst since the party was founded after World War II, has revealed almost overnight a conservative movement not just in crisis and increasingly open revolt, but one fretting about its long-term survival.“It has raised a question about our very identity,” Norbert Röttgen, a senior member of the Christian Democratic Union told public television ARD on Monday. “The last, the only big people’s party in Germany. And if this continues, then we will no longer be that.”Nearly 2 million voters shifted their support away from the Christian Democrats to the Social Democrats on Sunday, a departure coinciding with the end of Ms. Merkel’s tenure as chancellor.Pool photo by Fabian SommerYet beyond the conservatives’ disarray, what Germany’s messy vote says about the future of the country — and of Europe — is still hard to divine. It was an election filled with paradoxes — and perhaps one in which Germans themselves where unsure what they wanted.The last government included both traditional parties on the center-right and center-left, making it harder to gauge whether Sunday’s vote was in fact a vote for change. Olaf Scholz, the chancellor candidate of the Social Democrats, campaigned against Ms. Merkel’s party — but he has served as Ms. Merkel’s finance minister and vice chancellor for the past four years and in many ways ran as an incumbent. Some of the “change vote” went to him, but much of it was split between the progressive Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats whose economic agendas could not be further apart. Overall, 45.4 percent of votes went to parties on the left — the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party — and 45.9 to those on the right, including the C.D.U., the Free Democrats and the far-right Alternative for Germany party. But even if not a dramatic shift to the left, the devastation the returns have wrought on Ms. Merkel’s party are plain. With Ms. Merkel leaving, millions of conservative voters are leaving, too. Nearly 2 million voters shifted their support away from the Christian Democrats to the Social Democrats on Sunday, and more than 1 million defected to each of the Free Democrats and the Greens.It was a splintered result that revealed a more fragmented society, one that increasingly defies traditional political labeling. And it appeared to spell a definitive end to the long era of Germany’s traditional “Volks”-parties, catchall “people’s” parties. In their heyday both Social Democrats and Christian Democrats routinely got over 40 percent of the vote. A working-class organized in powerful labor unions voted Social Democrat, while a conservative churchgoing electorate voted Christian Democrat. The Social Democrats lost that status a while ago. With union membership declining and parts of the traditional working-class constituency abandoning the party, its share of the vote roughly halved since late 1990s. The crisis of social democracy has been a familiar theme over the past decade. Olaf Scholz, the candidate for chancellor of the German Social Democrats after initial results in the federal parliamentary elections on Sunday in Berlin.Steffi Loos/Getty ImagesMs. Merkel’s conservatives were insulated from these tectonic shifts for longer. As long as she was in office, her own popularity and appeal reached well beyond a traditional conservative electorate and disguised many of the party’s creeping troubles.Ms. Merkel understood that in a rapidly changing world, where church membership was declining and values evolving, she needed to appeal to voters outside the Christian Democrats’ traditional base to keep winning elections. Since taking office in 2005, she gradually took her party from the conservative right to the center of the political spectrum, not least by co-governing with the Social Democrats for three out of her four terms. It worked, at least for a while. Ms. Merkel kept the party together, analysts say, but in the process she stripped it of its identity. “The C.D.U. is hollowed out: it has no leadership and no program,” said Herfried Münkler, a prominent political scientist and author on German politics. “The essential ingredient has gone — and that is Merkel.”There are many reasons the conservatives performed badly. One was the fact that after 16 years of a conservative-led government, a certain stasis had set in and, particularly among younger voters, a desire for new leadership.Another was the deep unpopularity and poorly run campaign of Mr. Laschet, who staked his political future on winning the chancellery but is losing support by the day even within his own party. Since the election, a simmering civil war inside Germany’s conservative camp between those eager to cling on to power at any price and those ready to concede defeat and regroup in opposition was increasingly coming into focus.While Mr. Laschet is still insisting that he will hold talks with the Greens and the Free Democrats to form a majority coalition, many in his own camp have conceded defeat.Workers took down a campaign poster showing Mr. Laschet in Bad Segeberg near Hamburg, Germany.Fabian Bimmer/ReutersOn Tuesday one of his main internal rivals, Markus Söder, the swaggering and popular governor of Bavaria who narrowly missed landing the nomination himself in April, went so far as to congratulate Mr. Scholz on the election result.“Olaf Scholz has the best chance right now of becoming chancellor,” Mr. Söder told reporters in Berlin on Tuesday. The regional conservative leader in the northern state of Lower Saxony, Bernd Althusmann, told public broadcaster ARD that voters wanted change. “We should now humbly and respectfully accept the will of the voters,” he said.The pressure on Mr. Laschet to concede the race only increased after he failed to win the support of voters even in his own constituency. But some said that Ms. Merkel herself shared some blame for her party’s abysmal result. In all her years in power, she failed to successfully groom a successor. She tried once; but her attempt to position Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, now the defense minister, proved deeply divisive and ended in Ms. Kramp-Karrenbauer’s resignation as party leader after barely a year.Mr. Laschet, who followed her at the helm of the party, has also failed to bridge the divisions within the party between those who embraced the social changes Ms. Merkel had overseen from parental leave policies and same-sex marriage to welcoming over a million refugees in 2015 and 2016 — and those nostalgic for the party’s conservatism of old.But the days of uniting both camps under the umbrella of a single party may simply be over, analysts said.“Conservatism no longer has convincing answers — or at least not convincing enough to get 40 percent of the voters,” Mr. Münkler said.That raises existential questions for the Christian Democrats.In several neighboring European countries, including France and Italy, traditional center-right parties have already shrunk into irrelevance, struggling to find a message that appeals to voters and ripped apart by internal power struggles.Most now expect that the Christian Democrats will end up outside of government.“They might be in opposition for a while,” said Mr. Münkler, the political scientist, “and then the question is: Will they survive it?” Christopher F. Schuetze contributed reporting. More

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      Angela Merkel deja a una Alemania transformada

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      Ahora que la canciller se prepara para dejar su cargo tras 16 años al mando de Alemania, deja atrás un país que ha cambiado profundamente, y que está ansioso por cambiar aún más.STUTTGART, Alemania — La pequeña estrella plateada en la punta del Mercedes de Aleksandar Djordjevic brilla. La pule cada semana.Djordjevic fabrica motores de combustión para Daimler, uno de los principales fabricantes de automóviles de Alemania. Tiene un sueldo de unos 60.000 euros (alrededor de 70.000 dólares), ocho semanas de vacaciones y una garantía negociada por el sindicato de que no puede ser despedido hasta 2030. Tiene una casa de dos pisos y ese Mercedes clase E 250 en su entrada.Por todo eso, Djordjevic pule la estrella de su carro.“La estrella es algo estable y fuerte: significa Hecho en Alemania”, dijo.Pero en 2030 ya no habrá motores de combustión en Daimler, ni personas que fabriquen motores de combustión.“Estoy orgulloso de lo que hago”, dijo Djordjevic. “Es inquietante saber que dentro de diez años mi trabajo ya no existirá”.Djordjevic es la imagen de un nuevo orgullo y prosperidad alemanes. Y también de la ansiedad alemana.Mientras la canciller Angela Merkel se prepara para dejar su cargo después de 16 años, su país se encuentra entre los más ricos del mundo. Una clase media amplia y satisfecha es una de las facetas de la Alemania de Merkel que ha sido fundamental para su longevidad y su capacidad de cumplir una promesa fundamental de estabilidad. Pero su impacto ha sido mucho mayor.Viajar por el país que deja la canciller hace patente las profundas transformaciones que ha tenido.Trabajadores ensamblan baterías para carros eléctricos de Mercedes en Stuttgart.El puente transportador de la mina F60 en la mina de visitantes Lusatia, un punto de interés turístico en la región minera oriental de Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf.Ahí está el padre disfrutando de un permiso parental pagado en la católica Baviera. La pareja gay que cría a sus dos hijos en las afueras de Berlín. La mujer con hiyab que enseña matemáticas en una secundaria cerca de Fráncfort, donde la mayoría de los alumnos tienen pasaporte alemán, pero pocos tienen padres alemanes.El trabajador del carbón en el antiguo Este comunista que vota por un partido de extrema derecha que no existía cuando Merkel llegó al poder. Y unos hermanos jóvenes de una isla del Mar del Norte amenazada por la subida del nivel del mar que no recuerdan una época en la que Merkel no fuera canciller y no ven la hora de que se vaya.“Ella conoce el peligro del cambio climático desde antes de que nosotros naciéramos”, me dijo uno de los hermanos mientras se encontraba en el dique cubierto de hierba que protege la pequeña isla, Pellworm, de las inundaciones. “¿Por qué no hizo nada al respecto?”.Mientras Merkel dirigía su país a través de sucesivas crisis y dejaba otras sin atender, hubo cambios que lideró y cambios que permitió.Decidió eliminar gradualmente la energía nuclear en Alemania. Puso fin al servicio militar obligatorio. Fue la primera canciller en afirmar que el islam “pertenece” a Alemania. Cuando se trató de romper los paradigmas de los valores familiares conservadores de su país y de su partido, fue más tímida, pero finalmente no se interpuso.“Vio hacia dónde se dirigía el país y le permitió ir hacia ahí”, dijo Roland Mittermayer, un arquitecto que se casó con su esposo poco después de que Merkel invitara a los legisladores conservadores a aprobar una ley que permitiera el matrimonio igualitario, aunque ella misma votara en contra.Helmut y Stephanie Wendlinger con su hijo de 2 años, Xaver, y su hermana recién nacida, Leni, en Baviera.Un antiguo pozo minero convertido en lago cerca de la ciudad oriental de Forst. A medida que se va eliminando el uso del carbón, la población local espera que la industria turística ayude a compensar la pérdida de puestos de trabajo.Ningún otro líder democrático en Europa ha durado más tiempo. Y Merkel deja su cargo como la política más popular de Alemania.Muchos de sus predecesores de la posguerra tenían legados muy definidos. Konrad Adenauer ancló a Alemania en Occidente. Willy Brandt cruzó el Telón de Acero. Helmut Kohl, su antiguo mentor, se convirtió en el símbolo de la unidad alemana. Gerhard Schröder allanó el camino para el éxito económico del país.El legado de Merkel es menos tangible, pero igualmente transformador. Convirtió a Alemania en una sociedad moderna y en un país menos definido por su historia.Es posible que se la recuerde sobre todo por su decisión de acoger a más de un millón de refugiados en 2015-16, cuando la mayoría de las demás naciones occidentales los rechazaban. Fue un breve momento de redención para el país que había hecho el Holocausto y la convirtió en un ícono de la democracia liberal.“Fue una especie de curación”, dijo Karin Marré-Harrak, directora de una secundaria en la ciudad multicultural de Offenbach. “De alguna manera, nos hemos convertido en un país más normal”.Que te llamen un país normal puede parecer decepcionante en otros lugares. Pero para Alemania, una nación atormentada por su pasado nazi y cuatro décadas de división entre el Este y el Oeste, la normalidad era lo que todas las generaciones de la posguerra habían aspirado.Sin embargo, en casi todas partes existían también la persistente sensación de que la nueva normalidad se veía amenazada por desafíos épicos, que las cosas no podían seguir como estaban.El sueño alemánAleksandar Djordjevic, de 38 años, segundo desde la izquierda, y su esposa, Jasmina, jugando con su hija y unos amigos en Plochingen, cerca de Stuttgart.Djordjevic vive cerca de Stuttgart, la capital de la poderosa industria automovilística alemana. En 1886, en este lugar, Gottlieb Daimler inventó uno de los primeros automóviles en su jardín. En estos días, la ciudad es sede de Daimler, Porsche y Bosch, el mayor fabricante de piezas de carros del mundo.Al llegar a casa después de su turno una tarde reciente, Djordjevic todavía llevaba su uniforme de la fábrica, y junto al logotipo de Mercedes, el pin rojo del sindicato de obreros metalúrgicos.La mayoría de los empleados de Daimler pertenecen están sindicados. Los representantes de los trabajadores ocupan la mitad de los puestos en el consejo de administración de la empresa.“La historia del éxito de la industria alemana es también la historia de una fuerte representación de los trabajadores”, dijo. La estabilidad, los beneficios, las oportunidades para desarrollar habilidades, todo ello sustenta “la lealtad que los trabajadores sienten hacia el producto y la empresa”.Si el sueño americano es hacerse rico, el sueño alemán es la seguridad laboral de por vida.Djordjevic, de 38 años, siempre supo que quería trabajar para Daimler. Su padre trabajó allí hasta que murió. “Fue como una herencia”, dice.Cuando consiguió su primer trabajo, a los 16 años, pensó que lo había logrado. “Pensé: ‘Ya está’”, recuerda, “aquí me jubilaré”.Una fábrica de Daimler en Sindelfingen que producirá vehículos eléctricos.El montaje de un Mercedes-Benz Clase S en la fábricaAhora está menos seguro. Al igual que otros fabricantes de automóviles alemanes, Daimler tardó en iniciar su transición a los carros eléctricos. Su primer modelo puramente eléctrico se lanzó recién este año.El objetivo de Daimler es eliminar los motores de combustión antes de 2030. Nadie sabe lo que eso significa exactamente para los puestos de trabajo, pero Djordjevic hizo las cuentas.“Hay 1200 piezas en un motor de combustión”, dijo. “Solo hay 200 en un carro eléctrico”.“Los carros sostenibles son fantásticos, pero también necesitamos empleos sostenibles”, comentó.Daimler sigue creciendo. Pero gran parte del crecimiento del empleo está en China, dijo Michael Häberle, uno de los representantes de los trabajadores en el consejo de administración de la empresa.Häberle también ha estado en la empresa los 35 años de su vida laboral. Empezó como mecánico y fue ascendiendo hasta obtener un título en negocios y, finalmente, un puesto en el consejo de administración.De pie en una de las fábricas que ahora producen baterías para la nueva línea de carros eléctricos EQS, Häberle dijo que esperaba que la empresa no solo sobreviviera a esta transformación, sino que saliera fortalecida.La cuestión principal, dijo, es: ¿Alemania lo hará?Hubo un tiempo en el que daba por sentada la capacidad exportadora de su país. Pero ahora, dijo, “Alemania está a la defensiva”.Un hiyab alemánIkbal Soysal, de 30 años, da una clase de matemáticas de sexto grado en la secundaria Schiller de Offenbach.La industria automovilística alemana contribuyó a impulsar el milagro económico de la posguerra. Y los inmigrantes impulsaron la industria del automóvil. Pero no aparecen realmente en esa historia.Se les conocía como “trabajadores invitados” y se esperaba que vinieran, trabajaran y se fueran. Hasta hace dos décadas, no tenían un camino oficial hacia la ciudadanía.Entre ellos estaban los abuelos de Ikbal Soysal, una joven profesora de secundaria de la ciudad de Offenbach, cerca de Fráncfort, cuyo padre trabajó en una fábrica de piezas de automóvil para Mercedes.La generación de inmigrantes alemanes de Soysal sí figura en la historia de la Alemania actual. No solo tienen pasaporte alemán, sino que muchos tienen títulos universitarios. Son médicos, empresarios, periodistas y profesores.La población inmigrante de Alemania se ha convertido en la segunda mayor del mundo, por detrás de la de Estados Unidos. Cuando Merkel llegó al poder en 2005, el 18 por ciento de los alemanes tenía al menos un progenitor nacido fuera del país. Ahora es uno de cada cuatro. En la escuela de Soysal, en Offenbach, nueve de cada diez niños tienen al menos un progenitor que emigró a Alemania.Muchos de los profesores también.“Cuando empecé a dar clases aquí, todos los profesores eran alemanes con raíces alemanas”, dijo la directora, Karin Marré-Harrak. “Ahora, casi la mitad de ellos tienen raíces diversas”.Seis de cada diez habitantes de Offenbach tienen familias inmigrantes.Romaissa Elbaghdadi, de 15 años, entrenando con Angelo Raimon, de 13 años, en un club de boxeo en Offenbach.Soysal, musulmana, siempre quiso ser profesora, pero sabía que era un riesgo. En su estado, nunca había habido una profesora de secundaria que usara velo en la cabeza.Así que cuando la invitaron a su primera entrevista de trabajo, llamó con antelación para avisar a la escuela.Era 2018. Una persona lo consultó con la dirección, que rápidamente la tranquilizó: “Lo que importa es lo que tienes en la cabeza, no lo que tienes sobre la cabeza”.Consiguió ese trabajo y otros desde entonces.No siempre fue fácil. “Los alumnos se olvidan del velo en la cabeza muy rápido”, dijo Soysal. Pero algunos padres se quejaron con la dirección.Una vez, una alumna pidió consejo a Soysal. La niña llevaba un pañuelo en la cabeza, pero no estaba segura. “Si no te sientes bien, tienes que quitártelo”, le dijo Soysal.Para ella, en eso consiste la libertad de religión, consagrada en la Constitución alemana. “El asunto es que soy alemana”, dijo, “así que mi velo también es alemán”.La alternativa a MerkelMike Balzke junto con su esposa y sus dos hijas en Drewitz, donde su familia ha vivido por siete generaciones. “No queremos dinero, queremos un futuro”, dijo.Después de Offenbach, la siguiente parada es Hanau. Fue en este lugar donde, en febrero del año pasado, un atacante de extrema derecha entró en varios bares y disparó contra nueve personas, en su mayoría jóvenes, de origen migrante.La reacción contra la diversificación y modernización que ha sucedido bajo el mandato de Merkel se ha vuelto cada vez más violenta. Alemania sufrió tres ataques terroristas de extrema derecha en menos de tres años. El caldo de cultivo ideológico para esa violencia está encarnado en muchos sentidos por un partido que eligió su nombre en oposición a la canciller.A menudo, Merkel justificaba políticas impopulares llamándolas “alternativlos”, sin alternativa.La Alternativa para Alemania (AfD) se fundó en 2013 en oposición al rescate de Grecia que el gobierno de Merkel diseñó durante la crisis de la deuda soberana en Europa. Cuando el país recibió a más de un millón de refugiados en 2015 y 2016, el partido adoptó una postura antiinmigrante beligerante que le dio impulso y lo llevó al Parlamento alemán.La AfD está aislada en el oeste del país. Pero se ha convertido en el segundo partido más fuerte de la antigua Alemania del Este, que era comunista, el lugar donde creció Merkel.La Alemania de Merkel está más dividida entre el Este y el Oeste —al menos políticamente— que en cualquier otro momento desde la reunificación.En Forst, un centro textil en la frontera polaca que solía ser próspero pero perdió miles de puestos de trabajo y un tercio de su población después de la caída del Muro de Berlín, la AfD obtuvo el primer lugar en las últimas elecciones. El centro, las fábricas cerradas y las chimeneas aún salpican el horizonte.Una planta de energía de carbón que se cerrará en 2028, en el pueblo oriental de Jänschwalde.Una de las muchas fábricas abandonadas en Forst, un centro textil en la frontera polaca que alguna vez fue próspero. El nuevo propietario de esta antigua fábrica textil quiere transformarla en un espacio cultural.La desigualdad persistente entre el Este y Oeste sigue siendo evidente tres décadas después de la reunificación, a pesar de que el dinero de los contribuyentes ha fluido hacia el Este y su situación ha mejorado con el tiempo. Dado que el gobierno planea eliminar de manera gradual la producción de carbón para 2038, se prometen miles de millones de euros más en fondos para ayudar a compensar la pérdida de puestos de trabajo.Pero como dijo Mike Balzke, un trabajador de una planta de carbón cercana en Jänschwalde: “no queremos dinero, queremos un futuro”.Balzke recordó su optimismo cuando Merkel se convirtió en canciller por primera vez. Como era nativa del Este y científica, esperaba que fuera una embajadora de esa parte de Alemania y del carbón.En cambio, su aldea perdió una cuarta parte de su población durante su mandato. Nunca se construyó una línea de tren que había sido prometida de Forst a Berlín. La oficina de correos cerró.A Balzke, de 41 años, le preocupa que la región se convierta en un desierto.Esa ansiedad es honda. Y se profundizó con la llegada de refugiados en 2015.Dos padres y dos hijosRoland Mittermayer y Mathis Winkler con sus hijos Angelo, de 11 años, y Jason, de 6, cerca de Berlín. “Ella vio hacia dónde se dirigía el país y permitió que llegara allí”, dijo Mittermayer sobre la postura de Merkel sobre el matrimonio igualitario.La decisión de Merkel de dar la bienvenida a los refugiados fue una de las razones por las que Balzke dejó de votar por ella. Pero para muchas otras personas, sucedió lo contrario.Mathis Winkler, un trabajador de cooperación para el desarrollo en Berlín, nunca había votado por el partido de Merkel. Como hombre gay, estaba consternado por su definición conservadora y limitada de familia, que hasta hace solo unos años lo excluía a él, a su pareja de mucho tiempo y a los dos hijos que adoptaron.Pero después de que Merkel se convirtió en el objeto de la ira de la extrema derecha durante la crisis de refugiados, respaldó en solidaridad a su partido.Merkel impulsó su propia base en varios frentes. Durante su tiempo como canciller, se aprobó una legislación que permite a las madres y los padres compartir 14 meses de licencia parental remunerada. El ala conservadora de su partido se indignó, pero solo una década después se considera ya la nueva normalidad.Merkel nunca apoyó de manera decisiva el matrimonio igualitario, pero permitió que los legisladores votaran, sabiendo que se aprobaría.Jóvenes en un desfile del Día de Christopher Street en la ciudad de Cottbus, en el Este. Merkel nunca apoyó con firmeza el matrimonio igualitario, pero permitió que se votara.Helmut Wendlinger, un panadero en la zona rural de Baviera, aprovechó la legislación sobre licencia parental aprobada por el gobierno de Merkel. “Los hombres de la generación de mi padre no tuvieron esa oportunidad”, dijo.Winkler abandonó su apoyo al partido en 2019, después de que la sucesora de Merkel como líder conservadora, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, menospreciara el matrimonio entre personas del mismo sexo. Pero reconoció su deuda con la canciller.El 30 de junio de 2017, el día de la votación, le escribió una carta.“Es una pena que no pudieras apoyar con apertura el matrimonio entre parejas del mismo sexo”, escribió. “Aun así, te agradezco por haber hecho posible la decisión de hoy”.Luego la invitó a visitar a su familia “para verla por ti misma”.Ella nunca respondió. Pero él y su familia vivían a la vuelta de la esquina del domicilio de Merkel, quien nunca dejó su departamento en el centro de Berlín. La veían de vez en cuando en la fila para pagar en el supermercado.“Allí estaba ella, con papel higiénico en su canastilla de compras, yendo al supermercado como todos los demás”, recordó la pareja de Winkler, Roland Mittermayer. Incluso después de 16 años, todavía están tratando de descifrar a la canciller.“Es un enigma”, dijo Winkler. “Ella es un poco como la reina, alguien que ha existido durante mucho tiempo, pero nunca sientes que realmente la conoces”.La generación pos-MerkelLos hermanos Backsen: Sophie, de 23 años, Hannes, de 19, y Paul, de 21, en la isla de Pellworm. Su familia llevó al gobierno de Merkel a los tribunales por sus emisiones de dióxido de carbono.Seis horas al noroeste de Berlín, pasando por manchas interminables de campos verdes salpicados de parques eólicos y después de un viaje en ferry de 40 minutos desde la costa del Mar del Norte, se encuentra Pellworm, una isla tranquila donde la familia Backsen ha estado cultivando desde 1703.Hace dos años, llevaron al gobierno de Merkel a los tribunales por abandonar sus objetivos de emisión de dióxido de carbono establecidos en el Acuerdo de París. Perdieron, pero luego volvieron a intentarlo y presentaron una denuncia ante el tribunal constitucional.Esta vez ganaron.“Se trata de libertad”, dijo Sophie Backsen, de 23 años, a quien le gustaría hacerse cargo de la granja de su padre algún día.Los hermanos menores de Sophie, Hannes, de 19 años, y Paul, de 21, votaron por primera vez el domingo. Como el estimado del 42 por ciento de los votantes que lo harán por primera vez, votarán por los Verdes.“Si ves cómo vota nuestra generación, es lo contrario de lo que se percibe en las encuestas”, dijo Paul. “Los Verdes estarían gobernando el país”.Paul Backsen transporta granos para alimentar al ganado en la isla de Pellworm. Los Backsens han estado cultivando allí desde 1703.Sophie Backsen, de 23 años, alimenta a las vacas. “Tener una canciller toda mi vida significa que nunca ha tenido la menor duda de que las mujeres pueden hacer ese trabajo”, dijo sobre Merkel. “Pero en el tema climático, ella le ha fallado a mi generación”.Pellworm está al nivel del mar e incluso algunas partes están por debajo de él. Sin el dique que rodea la costa, se inundaría con regularidad.“Cuando hay lluvia constante durante tres semanas, la isla se llena de agua, como una bañera”, dijo Hannes.Aquí, la posibilidad de un aumento del nivel del mar es una amenaza existencial. “Esta es una de las elecciones más importantes”, dijo Hannes. “Es la última oportunidad de hacerlo bien”.“Si ni siquiera un país como Alemania puede manejar esto”, agregó, “¿qué posibilidades tenemos?”.La isla de Pellworm en el Mar del Norte está amenazada por el aumento del nivel del mar.Christopher F. Schuetze colaboró con reportería desde Berlín. More

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      Germany’s Far Right Is Nowhere in the Election. But It’s ‘Here to Stay.’

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      In the next national Parliament, the far-right Alternative for Germany party is likely to remain a pariah force. But it looks assured, too, of a role in shaping the country’s future.BERLIN — They promised they would “hunt” the elites. They questioned the need for a Holocaust memorial in Berlin and described Muslim immigrants as “head scarf girls” and “knife men.”Four years ago the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, arrived in the German Parliament like a wrecking ball, the first far-right party to win a place at the heart of Germany’s democracy since World War II. It was a political earthquake in a country that had once seen Hitler’s Nazi party rise from the fringes to win power in free elections.As another election looms on Sunday, the worst fears of many Germans have not come true: Support for the party has dipped. But neither have the hopes that the AfD would disappear from the political scene as suddenly as it appeared. If Germany’s fate in this election will not be settled by the far right, political analysts say, Germany’s future will partly be shaped by it.“The AfD is here to stay,” said Matthias Quent, professor of sociology at Magdeburg University of Applied Sciences and an expert on the far right. “There was the widespread and naïve hope that this was a short-lived protest phenomenon. The reality is that the far right has become entrenched in the German political landscape.”The AfD is polling at roughly 11 percent, just below its 2017 result of 12.6 percent, and is all but guaranteed to retain its presence in Parliament. (Parties with less than 5 percent of the vote do not get any seats.) But with all other parties refusing to include the AfD in talks about forming the next governing coalition, it is effectively barred from power.“The AfD is isolated,” said Uwe Jun, a professor of political science at Trier University.Yet with Germany’s two main parties having slipped well below the 30 percent mark, the AfD remains a disruptive force, one that complicates efforts to build a governing coalition with a majority of votes and parliamentary seats. Tino Chrupalla, one of the AfD’s two lead candidates in the election, believes that, eventually, the firewall other parties have erected against his party will crumble — most likely starting in one of the states in the former Communist East that is currently its power base.Tino Chrupalla, second from right, and other members of the AfD party before a meeting of the Parliament in Berlin last year.Michael Sohn/Associated Press“It’s not sustainable,” he said. “I’m confident that sooner or later there is no way without the AfD,” he told reporters this past week. “It will certainly start on the state level.”Founded eight years ago as nationalist free-market protest party against the Greek bailout and the euro, the AfD has sharply shifted to the right.The party seized on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to welcome over a million migrants to Germany in 2015 and 2016, actively fanning fears of Islamization and migrant crime. Its noisy nationalism and anti-immigrant stance were what first catapulted it into Parliament and instantly turned it into Germany’s main opposition party.But the party has struggled to expand its early gains during the past 18 months, as the pandemic and, more recently, climate change have shot to the top of the list of voters’ concerns — while its core issue of immigration has barely featured in this year’s election campaign.The AfD has tried to jump on the chaos in Afghanistan to fan fears of a new migrant crisis. “Cologne, Kassel or Konstanz can’t cope with more Kabul,” one of the party’s campaign posters asserted. “Save the world? Sure. But Germany first!” another read.At a recent election rally north of Frankfurt, Mr. Chrupalla demanded that lawmakers “abolish” the constitutional right to asylum. He also told the public broadcaster Deutsche Welle that Germany should be prepared to protect its borders, “if need be with armed force.”None of this rhetoric has shifted the race, particularly because voters seem to have more fundamental concerns about the party’s aura of extremism. Some AfD leaders have marched with extremists in the streets, while among the party’s supporters are an eclectic array of conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazi sympathizers.The AfD has not been linked directly to political violence, but its verbal transgressions have contributed to a normalization of violent language and coincided with a series of deadly far-right terrorist attacks.Supporters of the party at a rally in the central German city of Magdeburg this summer.Annegret Hilse/ReutersIn June 2019, a regional politician who had defended Ms. Merkel’s refugee policy was shot dead on his front porch by a well-known neo-Nazi. The killer later told the court that he had attended a high-profile AfD protest a year earlier.Since then, a far-right extremist has attacked a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle during a Yom Kippur service, leaving two dead and only narrowly failing to commit a massacre. Another extremist shot dead 9 mostly young people with immigrant roots in the western city of Hanau.The AfD’s earlier rise in the polls stalled almost instantly after the Hanau attack.“After these three attacks, the wider German public and media realized for the first time that the rhetoric of the AfD leads to real violence,” said Hajo Funke of the Free University in Berlin, who has written extensively about the party and tracks its evolution.“It was a turning point,” he said. “They have come to personify the notion that words lead to deeds.”Shortly after the Hanau attack, Thomas Haldenwang, the chief of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, placed elements of the AfD under surveillance for far-right extremism — even as the party’s lawmakers continued to work in Parliament.“We know from German history that far-right extremism didn’t just destroy human lives, it destroyed democracy,” Mr. Haldenwang warned after announcing his decision in March last year. “Far-right extremism and far-right terrorism are currently the biggest danger for democracy in Germany.”Today, the agency has classified about a third of all AfD members as extremist, including Mr. Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, the party’s other lead candidate. A court is reviewing whether the entire party can soon be placed under formal observation.Alice Weidel, the AfD’s other co-leader, during a media conference in Berlin last month.Clemens Bilan/EPA, via Shutterstock“The AfD is irrelevant in power-political terms,” said Mr. Funke. “But it is dangerous.”Mr. Chrupalla, a decorator who occasionally takes the stage in his overalls, and Ms. Weidel, a suit-wearing former Goldman Sachs analyst and gay mother of two, have sought to counter that impression. As if to hammer home the point, the party’s main election slogan this year is: “Germany — but normal.”A look through the party’s 207-page election program shows what “normal” means: The AfD demands Germany’s exit from the European Union. It calls for the abolition of any mandates to fight the coronavirus. It wants to return to the traditional German definition of citizenship based on blood ancestry. And it is the only party in Parliament that denies man-made climate change, while also calling for investment in coal and a departure from the Paris climate accord.That the AfD’s polling numbers have barely budged for the past 18 months suggests that its supporters are not protest voters but Germans who subscribe to its ideas and ideology.“The AfD has brought out into the open a small but very radical electorate that many thought we don’t have in this country,” said Mr. Quent, the sociologist. “Four years ago people were asking: ‘Where does this come from?’ In reality it was always there. It just needed a trigger.”Mr. Quent and other experts estimate the nationwide ceiling of support for the party at around 14 percent. But in parts of the former Communist East, where the AfD has become a broad-based political force entrenched at the local level, it is often twice that — enough to make it the region’s second-strongest political force.Among the under 60-year olds, Mr. Quent said, it has become No. 1.“It’s only a question of time until AfD is the strongest party in the East,” Mr. Quent said.That is why Mr. Chrupalla, whose constituency is in the eastern state of Saxony, the one state where the AfD already came first in 2017, predicts it will eventually become too big to bypass.“In the East we are a people’s party, we are well-established at the local, city, regional and state level,” Mr. Chrupalla said. “In the East the middle class votes for the AfD. In the West, they vote for the Greens.”Christopher F. Schuetze More

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      Election in East Germany Will Test the Far Right’s Power

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      Voting on Sunday may hint at how strong the Alternative for Germany party is in the east, and what that means for national elections in September.BERLIN — Five years ago, the nationalist Alternative for Germany sent the country’s traditional parties scrambling when it finished ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in the regional vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, an ominous portent of the far right’s growing allure.This Sunday, voters in Saxony-Anhalt will be back at the polls, and the result of this state election, coming just three months before a national one, will be scrutinized to see whether a nationally weakened AfD can hold on to voters in one of the regions where it has proved strongest.While much about the Saxony-Anhalt contest is unique to the region and heavily focused on local issues about schools and economic restructuring, a strong showing by the AfD — which rode a wave of anti-immigration sentiment in 2016 — could cause headaches for Armin Laschet, the leader of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats. Mr. Laschet, who is hoping to replace her in the chancellery, has struggled to gain traction in the former East German states.A sign in Magdeburg pointing the way to an “election event” and a “vaccination center.” Ronny Hartmann/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images“A strong showing by the Christian Democrats would remove a hurdle for Mr. Laschet and could strengthen his position heading into the national race,” said Manfred Güllner, who heads the Forsa Institute political polling agency.At the same time, he conceded, “If the AfD were to perform as well as the Christian Democrats, it would have repercussions for the federal vote.”Amid an election campaign largely carried out online because of pandemic restrictions, Mr. Laschet visited the state’s mining region last weekend. He stressed the need for time and investment to shift successfully away from coal and pledged to provide support similar to what his home state, North Rhine-Westphalia, got when it quit coal.Armin Laschet leads the Christian Democratic Union and hopes to be the next German chancellor.Jens Schlueter/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe effort may have paid off: A survey released on Thursday showed his party at 30 percent support in Saxony-Anhalt, a comfortable margin of seven percentage points ahead of the AfD, which is known by its German initials and currently holds 88 seats in the German Parliament.If that margin holds, it could bolster Mr. Laschet’s standing as campaigning begins in earnest for the Sept. 26 election, despite a bruising contest for the chancellor candidacy against a rival from Bavaria.In 2016, Germany was adjusting to the arrival of more than one million migrants the previous year, and Saxony-Anhalt was struggling against looming unemployment. While pollsters had predicted that the AfD, which made itself the anti-immigration party after forming in 2013 to protest the euro, would easily earn seats in the statehouse, no one expected it to come in second, winning more than 24 percent support from the region’s two million voters.Since then, Alternative for Germany has swung even further to the right, capturing the attention of the country’s domestic intelligence service, which placed the party’s leadership under observation over concerns about its anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim expressions and links to extremists. The party’s branches in Brandenburg and Thuringia are also under scrutiny, while an attempt to observe the national party has been put on hold pending the outcome of a legal challenge.The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt “has become very strong, despite the various messy and dubious scandals,” said Alexander Hensel, a political scientist at the Institute for Democracy Studies at the University of Göttingen, who has studied the party’s rise in the region. “Instead of breaking apart, they have consolidated, becoming an increasingly radical opposition force.”Candidates at a debate ahead of the election in Saxony-Anhalt.  Ronny Hartmann/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe continued support for Alternative for Germany in places like Saxony-Anhalt has created a split among many mainstream conservatives over whether the Christian Democrats should be willing to enter a coalition with the far-right party if needed.Mr. Laschet has made his opinion clear in recent days. “We don’t want any sort of cooperation with the AfD at any level,” he said in an interview with the public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.But with the jockeying for the future direction of the Christian Democratic Union underway after 16 years under Ms. Merkel’s largely centrist leadership, some members on the party’s right flank see her exit as a chance to shift harder to the right.In December, the conservative governor of Saxony-Anhalt, Reiner Haseloff, a Christian Democrat who is running for another term, fired his interior minister for seeming to float the possibility of a minority government, supported by the AfD.Mr. Haseloff has based his campaign on promising stability as the country begins to emerge from the pandemic, with a pledge to help improve the standard of living in rural areas, many of which lack enough teachers, medical professionals and police officers.Reiner Haseloff, the governor of Saxony-Anhalt, is a Christian Democrat up for re-election. On Wednesday he discussed reforestation in Oranienbaum-Wörlitz.Christian Mang/ReutersSaxony-Anhalt has the oldest population in all of Germany, a reflection of the number of young people who left the state in the painful years after the reunification of Germany’s former East and West in 1990.While the state has benefited from an attempt under the latest government to create jobs in less populated areas, including by setting up several federal agencies in Saxony-Anhalt, the region’s standard of living still lags those in similar regions in the former West Germany, Mr. Haseloff said.“There continue to be clear differences between east and west, and not only in the distribution of federal offices,” Mr. Haseloff said this week, ahead of an annual meeting focused on increasing regional equality.The Alternative for Germany has campaigned this time around on a rejection of the federal government’s policies to stop the spread of the coronavirus. “Freedom Instead of Corona Insanity” reads one of its posters, showing a blue-eyed woman with a tear rolling down to the rim of her protective mask.Among the other parties, the Social Democrats and the Left are both polling in the 10 to 12 percent rage, largely unchanged from where four years ago.Both the Free Democrats and the Greens are predicted to see their popularity roughly double from where they stood in 2016, which could make it easier for Mr. Haseloff to build a government if he is returned to office. Analysts said regional gains for them were unlikely to have wider repercussions for the national race.“Saxony-Anhalt is a very specific situation, they are coming from a unique history,” Mr. Hensel, the political scientist, said. “But regardless of whether the Greens earn 10 percent or the Free Democrats 8 percent of the vote, a quarter of voters support the AfD. That is worth paying attention to.” More

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      What Happened When Germany’s Far-Right Party Railed Against Lockdowns

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat Happened When Germany’s Far-Right Party Railed Against LockdownsIt didn’t work.Ms. Sauerbrey is a contributing opinion writer who focuses on German politics, society and culture.March 12, 2021A protester against lockdown measures in Berlin last year. Alternative for Germany has sought to improve its electoral standing by embracing anti-lockdown radicalism.Credit…John Macdougall/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBERLIN — In November, as Covid-19 cases began to rise, thousands of people gathered in Berlin to protest against restrictions. In among the conspiracy theorists and extremists were several lawmakers from the country’s main opposition party, the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany.It was striking to see legislators mingle with conspiracists in the streets before heading to the parliament for a debate. Yet it wasn’t too surprising. The party, known as AfD, has sought to improve its electoral standing ahead of the national election in September by associating with the anti-lockdown movement, an amorphous mix of conspiracy theorists, shady organizations and outraged citizens.But it hasn’t worked. In the months since the pandemic, the AfD’s support has slipped. Already struggling to reach new voters, its embrace of anti-lockdown sentiment seems to have further limited its appeal — and sped up its transformation into an extremist organization.When the pandemic reached Germany in March, the AfD’s initial response was cautious. Prominent party legislators warned about the virus, encouraged the government to act swiftly and voted for a package of economic relief. “Closing ranks is our first duty as citizens now,” Alexander Gauland, a co-leader of the party, said.But this attempt to cater to the average voter came at a cost. The party soon found itself deprived of many of its usual supporters, who took a different course, downplaying the danger and castigating the government. On Facebook and social media, the party stuttered. “The AfD,” said Johannes Hillje, a political consultant who analyzed the party’s social media performance during the pandemic, “lost its rage machine.”For a party fueled by indignation, that was a problem. As the first lockdown was tentatively lifted, through April and May, many leading AfD figures performed a 180-degree turn. No longer consensual, they fiercely railed against restrictions of any kind, which they claimed were unconstitutional as well as economically ruinous.In November, to demonstrate its defiance, the party held an in-person convention with hundreds of participants packed into a hall. That same month, an AfD legislator appeared in the parliament, where masks are mandatory, wearing one riddled with holes. And prominent party members not only attended some of the anti-lockdown protests that spread across the country last year but also adopted the protesters’ talking points, for example by calling Germany a “Corona dictatorship.” The AfD became something like the anti-lockdown party.The move made sense. By the time the pandemic arrived, the party “had started to struggle,” Kai Arzheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Mainz, told me. Migration had vanished from the top of voters’ concerns, depriving the party of its momentum. It was unclear how it might make further inroads.What’s more, the party was increasingly seen as extreme and radical. The media uncovered many ties to extremist groups such as the Identitarian Movement, which advocates ethnically homogeneous societies, while a radical internal group gained power. The AfD was considered so dangerous that the domestic intelligence service even put one wing of it under surveillance. “This has harmed the party’s potential to mobilize moderate voters,” Mr. Arzheimer said.Unable to appeal to more moderate voters, and in the midst of a pandemic that shored up support for the major parties, the party entwined itself with anti-lockdown radicalism. By conventional measures, the move has failed. National polls routinely place the party at or under 10 percent approval; two regional elections this Sunday are expected to underline the party’s electoral difficulties. The historic showing of 2017 — when the AfD became the first far-right party to enter Germany’s postwar parliament — is unlikely to be repeated, let alone surpassed.That doesn’t make the party less of a danger, though. In ways reminiscent of former President Donald Trump, the AfD is seeking to scuttle public trust in the political system. An AfD legislator suggested from the floor of the parliament that mail-in ballots were one of many “dark ideas” with which the other parties hoped to rig the vote, while a section of the party has run ads on Facebook warning against the practice.Ahead of an election where many may vote remotely — Germany’s vaccination program probably won’t be complete by fall — this amounts to a calculated strategy of subversion. Though the party’s influence is limited, the fact that 8 percent to 10 percent of the electorate seems unshakable in its support is deeply concerning.In a landmark decision last week, the country’s domestic intelligence agency put the entire AfD under surveillance, branding it an extremist organization. Whether it’s right to do so — and whether the order, which was suspended and is under legal challenge, will be enacted — is hard to know. But the AfD, and the danger it potentially poses to Germany’s democracy, is not going anywhere.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More