Germany: Rebellion on the Rhine

After talks in Germany on government spending collapsed, chancellor Olaf Scholz was forced to dissolve his coalition and call for snap elections, to be held on 23 February. The new chancellor looks like a foregone conclusion - opposition leader Friedrich Merz. But there is so much more at stake in these elections than the next few years in the chancellor's seat.

The bigger question is what this vote will tell us about Germany's post-war political "firewall" against anti-democratic parties. Germany has long resisted the influence of the far-right and left in their coalitions, but as politics around the world realigns, could Germany's famously staid political culture be about to get a whole lot less boring overnight? Jeremy Cliffe goes to Ludwigshafen to find out.

Producer: Jeanny Gering
Executive producer: Robert Nicholson
A Whistledown production for BBC World Service

(Photo: A flag reading "No neighbourhood for racism" is mounted on a canoe during a protest against right-wing extremism on the Rhine river, Cologne, Germany. Credit: Thilo Schmuelgen/Reuters)