In a German state election whose outcome polling had long foreshadowed, the far-right Alternative for Germany party has won a regional contest outright for the first time in its history — a milestone that redraws the boundaries of what is politically possible in a country still shaped by the weight of its twentieth-century past. Founded as a protest against eurozone policy and later reoriented around immigration and cultural anxiety, the AfD has spent years accumulating strength in eastern Germany without ever claiming the top position. That threshold has now been crossed, and with it comes a