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Since the fall of Nazism, said Samira El Ouassil in Der Spiegel (Hamburg), Germany’s main political parties have been united in an iron consensus: “Never again should the world be set on fire by right-wing extremist forces.” In practical terms, that has meant rejecting “even the smallest cooperation” with far-right parties in the Bundestag.

But last week that 80-year “firewall” was shattered with “astonishing momentum” by Friedrich Merz, leader of the conservative CDU, when he teamed up with Alice Weidel of the far-right AfD to pass a motion for stricter immigration laws. The motion was ultimately rejected 48 hours later by 350 to 338, but the breaking of a national taboo by a man widely seen as the chancellor-in-waiting sparked a wave of outrage, prompting rare interventions from the Protestant and Catholic Churches, and from Merz’s predecessor as CDU leader, Angela Merkel, while 160,000 marched in Berlin in protest.

Rightly so, said Stephan Detjen in Deutschlandfunk (Cologne). Thanks to Merz’s Faustian pact, a toxic, extremist party guilty of antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic statements has been allowed to enter the “bourgeois middle”. But what else could Merz do, asked Philip Fabian in Bild (Berlin). Unlike his opponents, the CDU leader understands that if there’s one issue that “drives voters into the arms of the AfD”, it’s immigration. With only weeks until a general election, it has surged to second in the polls on the back of widespread discontent over migration levels, the anger reaching boiling point when a two-year-old was stabbed to death by a failed Afghan asylum seeker in Aschaffenburg two weeks ago.

Parties such as the SPD and the Greens may prefer to hide behind “firewall hysteria”, and portray themselves “as the last bastion of resistance before an impending seizure of power of the sort that occurred in 1933”, but Merz is the only mainstream politician with a “concrete plan” to tackle migration and shrink the AfD. And it was the terror attack in Aschaffenburg that gave him the opportunity to act. “Ancient Greeks had a word for what Merz spotted,” said Georg Anastasiadis in the Münchner Merkur (Munich): “Kairos” – the moment that must be seized. A known risk taker, Merz went “all-in” with his immigration manoeuvre, hoping it would ultimately push the AfD onto the defensive.

But will Merz’s gamble pay off, asked Hannah Bethke in Die Welt (Berlin). A small, snapshot poll this week put the AfD only two points behind Merz’s CDU, though it was likely taken before last week’s immigration showdown had had time to influence public opinion. The election on 23 February looks closer than ever. By flirting with extremism, Merz may have alienated future coalition partners in the SPD and the Greens, and jeopardised any hope “of forming a stable government”.