Any sentence that ends with “for the first time since 1945” is likely to garner attention. When the first part of the sentence is “Germany votes for far-right government,” drinks are spat out and the volume on the telly is turned up.

And so it is. Over the weekend, German voters in Thuringia easily lifted the Alternative for Germany (AfD) to the top spot in regional elections. In Saxony, the party placed a close second, right behind the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which, together with the centre-left Social Democratic party, has had a lock on power nearly everywhere in Germany since the modern Germany state was founded in 1949.