In the current electoral cycle, Germans of a particular political persuasion can vote for the slightly left-of-center Social Democrats (SPD), the even more left-of-center Greens, the straightforward left that calls itself The Left party (Die Linke), the far-left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), or the decayed remains of the former East German Communist Party.

But for all those red-, pink-, green- or rainbow-colored voters under a Marmalade sky, the election in one German state a couple of weeks ago must have felt like the arrival of Götterdämmerung. It was a catastrophe not only for the fractured Left, but also for the right-of-center Christian Democrats (CDU) — the nation’s most powerful political party since Germans stopped using American Lucky Strikes and Pall Mall cigarettes for currency in bombed-out Berlin in 1945.