Reflecting a split in the German establishment on how to deal with the prospect of an AfD landslide in the coming state elections, two prominent politicians from the Merkel era have come out arguing for an end to the “Brandmauer” (firewall) against the AfD. Peter Tauber, who was CDU secretary general under Angela Merkel for many years, and Merkel’s defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, in her Merkel II government (a short-lived experience, terminated with a plagiarism scandal), told Stern that the CDU should build minority governments in Sachsen-Anhalt and Mecklenburg Vorpommern, accepting AfD votes on issues.
“Everybody against the AfD” does not work, Tauber said, perhaps drawing the lessons of the failure of such a formula, as applied in France.
