“We’re all waiting with bated breath. This is a fateful election,” a friend from Leipzig told me on Sunday. It was polling day in her state of Saxony and in neighbouring Thuringia. The atmosphere was tense, even fearful. Much more was at stake than just a reshuffle of seats in two of Germany’s regional parliaments.

As expected, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won in Thuringia with nearly 33% of the vote, and came second in Saxony with almost 31%. For the first time since the second world war, a far-right party has become a significant political force in Germany.

If there was shock, it wasn’t immediately obvious. Mario Voigt, leader of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in Thuringia, assumed the pose of an election winner, even though his party came second by some margin, with 24% of the vote. He announced he would begin coalition negotiations with other “parties of the democratic centre” – meaning without the AfD. In Saxony, where the CDU won narrowly, their leader, Michael Kretschmer, has also ruled out working with the AfD. In both states, this will require the centre-right party to build complex alliances with two or three leftwing parties.

Even if it’s difficult to justify from a purely democratic point of view, there are good reasons to maintain the Brandmauer (firewall) around the AfD. The party’s chapters in Thuringia........

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