It was Monday, February 10, two days after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democratic Union, sat for a televised debate, posturing, parrying, each trying to claim ground neither had quite earned. Germany’s snap election is set for February 23, under the shadow of a surging far-right – its march less a creep than a charge. The Alternative für Deutschland is no longer a spectre on the margins. It is here – shaping the conversation, forcing hands, shifting lines once thought uncrossable. In the university cafeteria, I met Frederik, 23, a philosophy student at Leipzig...