BItaly is recovering, albeit sullenly, from eight years of conservative chaos. In France, voters have once again come together to fend off the ever-present threat of Marine Le Pen. In the US, Democrats are energized after the nomination of Kamala Harris as their presidential candidate. But this tentative revival of sensible politics is unfortunately denied to Germany.

On Sunday, two former eastern German regions are expected to flock to support two far-right parties. The three centrist parties that govern the country at the national level – the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) – are struggling to clear the 5% hurdle designed to keep extremists out of parliament. Meanwhile, the conservative CDU – Angela Merkel’s old party – is struggling to counter the populists.

In the small state of Thuringia, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is still well ahead with an expected 30 percent of the vote, even though its support has fallen slightly since January. The CDU is behind with 22 percent, closely followed by a seditious group called BSW, named after its founder Sahra Wagenknecht.

Wagenknecht has learned from the playbook of Le Pen, Giorgia Meloni and others. She dominates television, looks respectable, poses as the “people’s champion”, exploits voters’ fears and at the same time pretends to be part of the mainstream. From nowhere, she has become a force to be reckoned with.

Her career is fascinating. As the former leader of the Left Party, which emerged from East Germany’s former communist party, the SED, which ruled the country until 1989, Wagenknecht combines left-wing economic policies with anti-immigration national conservatism – the classic horseshoe where two extremes meet.

What is particularly dangerous for Germany and Europe is that a woman who saw good in Stalinism has made an end to military support for Ukraine a prerequisite for cooperation with other parties. In talk shows, she makes statements that please the Kremlin: she calls for an end to sanctions, a resumption of energy imports from Russia and condemns NATO’s “warmongering”.

In the neighboring state of Saxony, the picture is only slightly less worrying. The CDU is just ahead of the AfD, but the gap is razor-thin. Long-time Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer is desperately trying to win over undecided voters by calling for a reduction in aid to Kyiv.

All this comes a year before the federal elections that will end five years of indecision and bickering within the three-party “traffic light” coalition of Olaf Scholz’s SPD, the Greens and the FDP. The CDU will almost certainly lead a new coalition, but what a coalition and what a CDU – because Merkel’s party is unrecognizable from what it was a few years ago.

After the state elections on September 1, talks will take place to forge government coalitions in Thuringia and Saxony – and to keep the AfD at bay.

The firewall or “firewall” still exists for this party. The irony – and hypocrisy – is that the remaining parties will be forced to make a deal with Wagenknecht, an equally dangerous but more intelligent representative of the new far right. The CDU and SPD (if they get over the hurdle) will turn up their noses, but they may have no choice but to make a deal with her.

Some Germans in the West may take comfort in the fact that we are in the post-communist East – and what do they expect? But the contamination goes far beyond geographic boundaries. All four major parties are in a mess. The Greens are suffering a backlash as opposition to climate action gains momentum across much of Europe. Robert Habeck, the party’s vice chancellor and economics minister, is regularly outmaneuvered and out-instructed by his so-called coalition partners. At a time when the country is crying out for inspiration, Scholz sees leadership as little more than a matter of sullen survival.

The real villain in this article is Christian Lindner, FDP leader and finance minister. Throughout post-war Germany, the FDP usually, but not always, managed to just about clear the 5% hurdle to get into parliament, and several times became the junior partner of center-right and center-left governments. Some of the statesmen of the past, such as long-serving foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, were Free Democrats.

Now, in his attempt to create a “definition” ahead of next fall’s general election, Lindner has turned the party into a car-loving, anti-woke, ultra-libertarian force. This has led to an exodus of a group of long-standing supporters. Lindner should have taken this into account and found just enough supporters to prevail. If his calculations turn out to be wrong, the FDP, one of the original post-war parties, could be finished.

Linder is also the main proponent of the “black zero,” Germany’s fetishistic restriction on a balanced annual budget. The coalition has just negotiated a deal, albeit a dirty one: it envisages a cut in military aid to Ukraine in 2025 from €7.5 billion this year to €4 billion (though this is still a high amount compared to other countries) and a much smaller increase in overall defense spending than planned. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius did not hide his anger.

The CDU, on the other hand, has been pushed back from the center by its chairman, Friedrich Merz, into a more traditional form of conservatism. His personal popularity remains just as low as Scholz’s. Nerves are frayed when she looks over Wagenknecht’s shoulder. “She is working to destroy the CDU. She has a devilish ability to identify weak points and destroy them,” notes Mariam Lau of Die Zeit, who recently interviewed her.

This is an unfortunate political moment for Germany, but the dangers should not be exaggerated. Next year’s elections are likely to produce another mainstream coalition of the CDU and SPD. The German constitution offers admirable guarantees of stability and democratic norms. The show will go on.

AfD and BSW thrive on novelty and drama, and it is possible that their appeal will wane as the economy picks up again. Cool heads and hard hats are needed in the next few weeks. In the longer term, something else is required. Germany needs better than that: politicians who will restore faith in the deliberative and consensus-oriented politics that has served the country so well and has been a model for others.