Why has Germany experienced the most tense election campaign?

BerlinSome 60 million Germans are called to vote on Sunday after a tense election campaign in a country accustomed to political consensus. This is the shortest and probably most controversial election campaign in the Federal Republic of Germany.. Harsh tone, personal insults, hate campaigns on social media, violence against local politicians, torn-up election posters, the rise of the far right and foreign interference have marked this election campaign. Until now, boring debates were the norm.

Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz referred to his rival, conservative leader Friedrich Merz, as "Fritze" in December, a pejorative version of his given name, and accused him of "talking nonsense." "I refuse to let the Chancellor attack me and refer to me personally in this way. But obviously this is a pattern we are now seeing," Merz complained after the attack.

"Olaf is a fool," wrote the tech magnate Elon Musk, owner of Telsa and SpaceX, in German on the social network X after the breakup of the traffic light coalition in November. The richest man in the world and Donald Trump's right-hand man again attacked the chancellor afterMassive accident in December at a Christmas market in Magdeburg. "Scholz should resign immediately," demanded Musk, who called the chancellor a "stupid incompetent."

Elon Musk, present

Musk, who helped Trump win, has been involved in the German election campaign. The entrepreneur called German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier an "anti-democratic tyrant" when Steinmeier denounced attempts at foreign interference in the election campaign at the end of the year.

Although everyone feared Russian interference, as has happened in other elections in Eastern Europe, In the end, it was the United States that participated. The owner of the social network X has campaigned for the far right. "Only AfD can save Germany," Musk said, not only showing support for the extremists on social media, but also speaking at an AfD election rally via video.

Scholz rejected any outside interference in the elections last Saturday after US Vice President JD Vance criticised the cordon sanitaire around far-right parties. Vance met with far-right candidate Alice Weidel in Munich.

German politicians have also been the target of insults on social media. Alice Weidel, for example, has been called a "Nazi nymphet" by some users of the X platform and other variations such as "pathetic Nazi nymphet" or "lesbian Nazi nymphet."

Political parties targeted by attacks

There have also been attacks on party offices with paint, attacks on politicians and countless election posters torn up. For example, a campaign vehicle belonging to a local Social Democrat candidate in northern Germany was set on fire by unknown assailants. A man attacked three campaign members of the Greens in Bookholzberg (Lower Saxony), insulting them and attacking one in the face.

The windows of the party office of the Greens in Slesvig were also smashed with stones. The chancellor candidate of the liberal FDP party had a foam cake thrown in the face by a woman at a campaign event in Greifswald. Eggs were also thrown at an information point of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) there. In Hanover, far-left activists occupied the headquarters of the conservative CDU party and lit flares on the balcony. In Leipzig, activists blocked the entrance to the conservative headquarters and hung a banner on the door reading: "Their masks have fallen. Firebreaks have never existed."

The activists were thus criticising the conservatives' flirtation with the far right before the election and, in turn, the breaking of the cordon sanitaire among the extremists. Merz was able to get a five-point plan against illegal immigration passed in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, thanks to votes from the extremists.

Poster war

The election posters of the Alternative for Germany have become a favourite target of the far left. "Fascists" and "Nazis" are written on some of their posters.

"In this election campaign, we are seeing more destroyed, damaged and torn down posters than in previous ones," complains the party L'Esquerra. Faced with the large number of posters being crossed out, the Greens in Swabia (south-west Germany) have responded to the insults against their candidate for chancellor Robert Habeck with graffiti and positive messages. "We were already thinking about how we could react to the graffiti and its destructive energy before the regional elections in 2023. We wanted to respond with something cooler and more positive," Angela Isop, a spokeswoman for the Kempten district of the Greens, told the German news agency Deutsche Presse Agent (

). The Greens have therefore commissioned graffiti artist Bernd Imminger to transform the insults into art. Inminger, for example, covered the insult "idiot" on an election poster for Habeck with a graffiti depicting a cute sunflower dumping a bucket of water on planet Earth and the positive message: "We care for you."