As Europe is gripped by the financial crisis and governments fall across the continent, Germany has acted as an island of prosperity and stability. Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed to embody the new power of the problem child of old Europe, a country admired by some and hated by others.
However, that was last month. After that, the president of the state, Christian Wulff, who was Merkel's choice, was forced to resign because of the mistakes he made as the premier of Lower Saxony. His downfall came at the height of the German carnival. While the Catholics in the west and south of Germany were celebrating, the Protestants from the east of Germany were consolidating their power in Berlin. Germany will have a Protestant priest as head of state, in addition to being ruled by the daughter of a Protestant priest.
This does not mean much to ordinary Germans because religion plays almost no role in German public life (as long as that religion is not Islam). But it means a lot to Germany's main ruling party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and even more to its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).
Both parties are successors to the Catholic German Center Party, which fought against Protestant dominance in Prussia and Bismarck's Reich. Supported by Catholic majorities in western and southern Germany, the CDU and CSU have traditionally been the ruling parties in the post-war Federal Republic of Germany since the days of Konrad Adenauer. Within both parties grumbling about the Protestant rise can be expected.
The real danger of the current presidential crisis and its solution for Merkel lies elsewhere, above all in the political calculations made by Joachim Gauk, the new German president, the front-runner.
As a rule, German presidential elections are very tense events because they can be an early indicator of the emergence of new political majorities. Moreover, the chancellor is not directly elected and can only be removed by a constructive vote of no confidence, which means that the parliamentary majority chooses the new chancellor.
This makes any majority against the ruling chancellor very dramatic, as it reflects the decline of her or his power. This is especially true if such a majority is formed against the chancellor on the question of the central part of the staff, which the election of the president certainly is. This happened in the case of Gauk's election.
Until last weekend, Merkel appeared to be standing on rock-solid political ground. On the international stage, she enjoys a great reputation, at home she is at the peak of popularity and has no rivals to fight against in her own party. Support for its coalition partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), has fallen to two percent, but the CDU/CSU still has a clear lead over the Social Democrats (SPD, the largest opposition party), and the left is divided into four parties.
Therefore, even if Merkel's coalition were to fall apart at the next federal election, or even before, it was always assumed that no one could seriously threaten her chancellorship, and certainly not within the renewed "grand coalition" with the SPD. It seemed that there was simply no majority against Merkel.
This miscalculation overlooked the growing concerns of its coalition partners, the FDP, about its chances of survival. In the short time since the decision to elect Gauk as president, the granite beneath Merkel's feet has become political quicksand. What happened?
Quite simply, the FDP undermined it and switched sides on a very important issue, joining forces with the opposition parties to support Gauk. The prospect of a new majority suddenly appeared, and Merkel faced the choice of complying or ending the coalition. She gritted her teeth and gave in. However, the crack in her coalition can no longer be hidden.
Gauk's candidacy was pushed through by the SPD/Greens/FDP majority, which arose out of intersecting political interests. However, this only makes the situation more dangerous for Merkel, as the beginning of the end for German chancellors usually looks just like that episode.
Trust between the ruling parties has disappeared. Federal elections this spring will show whether the FDP's maneuver will lift the party above the 5 percent electoral threshold needed to remain in parliament, or whether the fear of certain death will force them to commit political suicide. If the FDP survives and the center-right coalition fails to win a majority, the party will work on an alliance with the SPD and the Greens, which will cost Angela Merkel the chancellorship in 2013.
This means that the CDU/CSU will no longer have any regard for the FDP. If Merkel wants to protect her position, her only option after the 2013 general election will be a grand coalition with the SPD, and to have a major say in that arrangement, she will need every vote within the center-right camp she can get.
For Merkel, the situation will be very serious from now on. It may be keeping the European crisis away from Germany's doorstep, but that doesn't mean Germany won't soon fall into its own crisis.
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