GERMANY’S feverish political scene cooled off just a little. Two big sighs of relief permitted some people, at least temporarily, to stop chewing their fingernails.

The first act opened with a loud bang. Angela Merkel, 64, was stepping down! After 18 years presiding over the biggest party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and 13 years as chancellor, she flouted her own insistence that both jobs belonged in one person’s hands and gave up the first job. She can remain chancellor until 2021 but will not then try for a fourth term. There have been murmurs that she might not even last that long. The top job is not bound by such strong cement as the US presidency. But such murmurs are far from defined and opinion polls still award her slightly over 50 per cent approval ratings.

After she decided to step down from the party chair, Germany was gripped by the search for successor. In the past, a single name was often marked from the start. This time three rivals grabbed the stage. The ambitious young Health Minister Jens Spahn, 38, long a right-wing opponent of Merkel, was disliked in nearly all circles. Second contender Friedrich Merz, 63, lost a political duel with Merkel years ago and turned to business, becoming boss of the German division of Blackstone, a giant world holding company managing assets of countless big companies, itself worth over $450 billion and involved in many smelly financial scandals. His “free market” views were as far right as you could go. If he were to win the vacancy and a better chance for the very top in 1921 or sooner, many fear that Germany would be headed down a road like that of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.