German politics have gone from boring and stable to unpredictable and volatile

In September German Chancellor Angela Merkel won an underwhelming election victory. Her opponents lost more than she won, but observers still expected her to put together a new three-party coalition to replace the shopworn “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats. But coalition talks collapsed dramatically, and the most predictable of political systems headed into the unknown.
The poll was a disaster for the two traditional governing parties, the Christian Democratic Union (its si