On a Sunday in late September, German voters in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin rendered a judgment that carries the weight of historical rupture: for the first time in its existence, the CDU failed to cross the threshold for parliamentary representation in a German state, while the far-right AfD and the resurgent Left Party absorbed the political energy that once sustained the center. Chancellor Friedrich Merz stands at a crossroads familiar to leaders across the Western world — the moment when the center discovers it can no longer hold simply by insisting it should. What is unfoldin