Sixteen months into his chancellorship, Friedrich Merz confronts a reckoning that reaches beyond his own political survival: the Alternative für Deutschland's near-majority in Saxony-Anhalt has exposed the limits of Germany's long-standing strategy of containing the far right through exclusion and competent governance. In a country still shaped by the memory of what extremism once cost the world, the question is no longer whether the firewall has crumbled, but whether any mainstream leader possesses the language and vision to rebuild it. The answer matters not only for Germany, but for the dem