Cold War divide over immigration haunts Merkel

German chancellor Angela Merkel stands on stage in Greifswald. Photo / AP

Angela Merkel is all but certain to win a fourth term in power in German elections today, unless the polls have got it spectacularly wrong.

But if she does remain Chancellor, it will be at the helm of a Germany that is deeply divided.

In Weimar, you can see the crack that runs through German society. Two of Germany's greatest writers, Goethe and Schiller, lived here. So did the composer J S Bach. The city was also where the ill-fated Weimar Republic of the inter-war years was proclaimed. If any city can claim to be the epicentre of German culture, it is Weimar.

But while Merkel enjoys some of the highest personal approval ratings in Europe, Weimar is seething with discontent. "It's the refugees," a flower seller in the market square who gives his name only as Harry says. "She brought all these people in and now we'll never get rid of them."

Weimar and the surrounding state of Thuringia lie in the heartlands of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany party (AfD). In third place nationally, with around 13 per cent support, the AfD is second here with around 18 per cent.

The national polls look good for Merkel, but on a regional level the picture is different. For 45 years Weimar lay behind the Iron Curtain, in communist East Germany, and the pattern is repeated across the former East. The AfD is on 22 per cent in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania. The best it has managed anywhere in the former West is 8 per cent.

More than 25 years after reunification, Germany remains divided along Cold War lines. Four years ago, Merkel could claim she had banished the divide. The first chancellor to have grown up in the East, she won majorities across the country in elections. This time it is different. "Things were better in East Germany," says Harry's wife, Heike. "We had a lot of problems, but people were happier. Harry has to work seven days a week, and we still can't pay the bills."

Ostalgie, nostalgia for the old communist East, and resentment of poorer living standards compared to the West have played a role. This year voters are turning from the former communists to the nationalist AfD. Alexander Gauland, its lead candidate, has called for Germans to "reclaim their past" and "feel pride in the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars". Merkel has opened up a flank, both on the political right and in the geographical East.

West of the old Iron Curtain lies a different Germany. Frankfurt is a symbol of Europe's economic powerhouse, and a city of immigrants. Beneath the skyscrapers, Turkish restaurants jostle for space with Arab hairdressers. "Frankfurt is a global city with a long tradition of coexistence with immigrants, and a good social integration policy," says Matthias Zimmer, a CDU MP. "We've had immigration since the 1960s, which led to the modernisation of West German society. That has never happened in East Germany: what it's experiencing now are the birth pangs of catching up with modernity."