Chancellor Olaf Scholz is struggling to persuade Germans he can handle the litany of troubles looming over the country he has led since 2021.
With his coalition government beset by squabbling, the shadow of a recession lingering, and the industrial base underpinning its economic model under threat, the Social Democrat who won office after a hapless campaign by the Christian Democrat Union is on the back foot again.
The sense of drift has opened the door to a surge in far-right support, eroding a political consensus underpinning almost eight decades of prosperity since World War II. The country led by Scholz finds itself in one of its most unsettling moments since reunification in 1989.