There is a word for the relief many across Germany must have felt as Chancellor Angela Merkel missed out on a Nobel Prize for her stance on refugees: Schadenfreude.
The bookmakers' favorite to pick up the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday, Merkel lost out to a group dedicated to building democracy in Tunisia. The award saves her detractors the discomfort of seeing international honor bestowed on the chancellor for an open-door policy that is causing a storm at home, alienating political allies and a skeptical public.
Merkel's approval ratings, already in decline after this year's standoff with Greece, have plunged by a third since April to the lowest in almost four years. With her coalition partners openly querying her stance, Merkel looks to have lost her sure political touch, and has begun to attract comparisons with her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.