Bodo Ramelow before the AfD attack on the state parliament presidential office in Magdeburg

Bodo Ramelow is the man you need to talk to before the AfD grabs the office of state parliament president in Magdeburg this Tuesday: As vice president, he co-leads the German Bundestag, and as a state politician in Thuringia, the leftist has experienced how the AfD shapes and strains a parliament. We'll meet on Saturday in Berlin's Lustgarten; Ramelow has just given the pulpit speech on German Unity Day next door in the cathedral. But in the Lustgarten, where the last major meetings of republican forces took place in February 1933, historical shallows are just as close as heavenly heights.