A smiling girl in a checked dress, right arm raised, leads a group of light-skinned teenagers running joyfully down a school corridor. Underneath is the slogan: “Islam-free schools!”
Condemned as a “very dangerous” allusion to Nazism, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s poster has raised the already heated political temperature as a crucial election in Bavaria looms.
The AfD’s leader, Alexander Gauland, used an angry debate in the German parliament last week to accuse the chancellor, Angela Merkel, of dividing the nation with her immigration policy. An uncharacteristically emotional Merkel hit back, saying there was “no excuse for rabble-rousing”. Martin Schulz, the former leader of the Social Democrats, consigned Gauland to “the dung heap of German history”.
The clash — two weeks after AfD members