This DW roundup from September 28, 2026 reads like a diagnostic scan of the German body politic — and the results are mixed. The headline story is Berlin's Left Party filing a complaint against CSU leader Alexander Dobrindt, but the richer signal sits in the constellation of items around it: a constitutional court anniversary doubling as a defensive speech, AfD failing to win mayoral seats, a Rhine at historic lows, and intelligence warnings about Chinese research espionage. The AfD's municipal losses in Lower Saxony are the sharpest data point. In Salzgitter, CDU incumbent Frank Klingebiel took 74.7% against the AfD's Patricia Mair. In Munster, an independent candidate secured roughly 80%. In Bockenem, the margin was 69.6% to 30.4%. These are not close races. At the local level, German voters are still rejecting far-right candidates by decisive margins — even as the AfD and the Left Party win state-level elections in eastern Germany. President Steinmeier's speech at the Constitutional Court's 75th anniversary was less celebration than fortification. His language — "forces at the political margins," "resilience of our democracy," the court as "counter-model to tyranny" — is institutional armor-plating. The court has processed nearly 274,000 cases since 1951, over 96% constitutional complaints. Its rulings are uncontestable. Steinmeier is reminding the public that the guardrails exist and function. Meanwhile, the Rhine crisis has quietly become an infrastructure emergency. The Cologne reading hit 40 centimeters — smashing the previous 2018 record of 69 centimeters. Gauging stations in Koblenz, Andernach, and Düsseldorf registered negative readings, meaning the measurement points were completely dry. The Rhine links Rotterdam to western Germany's industrial core, carrying coal and fuel. This is not a weather story; it is a supply-chain chokepoint. NRW leader Hendrik Wüst's Turkey trip signals positioning on multiple levels. The visit marks the 65th anniversary of the 1961 guest-worker agreement, with one-third of Germany's 3 million Turkish-origin residents living in NRW. Wüst, widely seen as a potential successor to Chancellor Merz, is building foreign-policy credentials while anchoring integration as a conservative value. Foreign Minister Wadephul's Netherlands visit surfaces the EU budget fight: Germany and the Netherlands are among states resisting the European Commission's proposed €1.76 trillion ($2 trillion) budget for 2028-2034. Add ICC pressure from Trump calling for mass withdrawal, and German diplomacy is simultaneously defending multilateral institutions and fighting over their funding. The BfV intelligence warning on Chinese research espionage — that China has built a "comprehensive system of technology and know-how transfer" — rounds out the picture. Germany's generative assets (research institutions, industrial know-how, constitutional infrastructure) are under pressure from every direction: political polarization, climate-driven infrastructure failure, great-power espionage, and transatlantic institutional erosion.
