In Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, German voters face a threshold moment that echoes across eight decades of postwar democratic consensus: whether to grant state-level governing power to the far-right Alternative for Germany for the first time since World War II. Polling at 40 percent — nearly double its nearest rival — the AfD and its lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund have framed this not as a regional contest but as the opening move toward national power in 2029. What hangs in the balance is not merely a state government, but the informal architecture of restraint that mainstream German parties have b