The first “grand coalition” government in Germany’s postwar history was formed in 1966 to address an unexpected economic downturn, amid concerns over a nascent neo-Nazi far right. Nearly six decades later, as the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic party (SPD) prepare to join forces across the right-left divide for the fifth time, following February’s snap election, the circumstances are superficially similar. The scale of the challenges, however – and the sense of jeopardy – are of a different order.
As geopolitical events have undermined its trade‑led business model, the German economy has been undergoing the most prolonged period of stagnation since the second world war. Not unrelatedly, the extreme-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party – elements of which are judged a threat to the democratic constitutional order by security services – has risen in the polls to become the second-biggest party in the EU’s most powerful member state. At the same time, a Putin-sympathetic Donald Trump is dismantling the transatlantic security guarantees on which Germany has relied in the postwar era.
