NEXT weekend Germany celebrates the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Yet a few days before that, Die Linke (The Left), the party that descends from the communists who ran the old East Germany, may take charge of one of reunified Germany’s 16 states (Thuringia) for the first time.

The mainstream parties treat The Left as pariahs in the federal Bundestag. The party jeers from the backbenches and fights internal vendettas. It hates capitalism and wants to scrap NATO. In debates over Ukraine many Leftists have blamed America more than Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Their parliamentary leader, Gregor Gysi, refuses to call the East German regime an “unjust state”.

In state and local governments in eastern Germany, however, The Left has become a home for many Ossis (Easterners), who tend to be apolitical and feel vaguely frustrated. They vote Left partly for reasons of “Ostalgie”. In Brandenburg The Left governs boringly as junior partner in a “red-red” coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD). But Thuringia presents a new opportunity. In its election in September the Christian Democrats (CDU), the party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, came first, with 33%. But The Left came a strong second with 28%. It could now eke out a tiny majority if it combined with the other two left-leaning parties: the SPD and the Greens.

To many on Germany’s centre-left such a “red-red-green” alliance is the holy grail at the federal level to replace governments led by Mrs Merkel. In Thuringia (as in the rest of Germany) the CDU rules in coalition with the SPD. The SPD has paid dearly there, winning a meagre 12% of the vote in September. So the state’s Social Democrats want to try joining with The Left and the Greens instead. Thuringia’s 4,300 SPD members are expected to say yes to the idea on November 4th. The Left could lead its first-ever state government by December.

Its premier would be Bodo Ramelow. A western transplant in Thuringia, he personally brings no baggage from East German times. And although he was a firebrand unionist once, he counts as a moderate by The Left’s standards. Thuringians fret less about him than about the stability of a government that would have only a one-seat majority.

The overarching question is whether a red-red-green government in Thuringia could foreshadow a similar experiment in the Bundestag (albeit with an SPD chancellor). It would be much harder to do in national politics, where foreign and security policy cleaves a wide gulf between the two red parties. And yet the SPD is in a terrible bind. Increasingly, it merely holds the stirrups for others to mount: Mrs Merkel in Berlin, now Mr Ramelow in Erfurt. The SPD’s thirst for national power may yet force it to turn to The Left in the Bundestag.