BERLIN — Germany's parliamentary election campaign looks like a front-running contender for the title of the most boring in the history of the Federal Republic.
The predominant response among commentators to the sole television debate between Chancellor Angela Merkel and her challenger, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, held two weeks before the election, was a collective yawn — all the more remarkable considering the historical events that overshadow this election.
Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall came down, triggering a seismic shift that moved the borders of the old Federal Republic and of Western Europe as a whole, hundreds of miles to the east. The vast Soviet empire exited the historical stage without a single shot being fired.