Yet even before the magazine was printed, Merkel's personal approval ratings were plummeting. Having enjoyed record public approval ratings of 75 per cent in April 2015, Merkel's standing with voters dropped to a four-year low of 46 per cent last month. The mass sex attacks carried out in Cologne on New Year's Eve – where the majority of suspects were men of Algerian, Tunisian or Moroccan descent – and the ensuing police cover turned public opinion against her. Germans, who lined up at train stations to welcome refugees six months ago, had performed a dramatic about-turn on immigration.

All this has made Merkel a popular punching bag on both sides of the Atlantic for demagogues such as Trump, who wouldn't normally dream of bringing up German politics during a primary debate. Her handling of the refugee crisis has come to symbolise how the political establishment has lost touch with ordinary voters.

Increasingly isolated

Merkel has appeared increasingly isolated in Europe, where Austria has emerged as the leader of an alliance of central European and west Balkan states that have opposed her plan for a co-ordinated European Union solution to the refugee crisis. Yet the middle ground is just as shaky in Berlin, where Horst Seehofer, the head of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats Union's sister party, the nominally liberal Christian Social Union, has become one of her toughest critics.

"Without restrictions on immigration, Germany and all of Europe will collapse spectacularly," he recently said during a speech in Munich, before claiming the government had no strategy to deal with the refugee crisis.

This notion that the once unassailable Iron Chancellor has lost control gained credence on Sunday when elections were held for three regional parliaments. Voters appeared to give Merkel's decision to move to the left on immigration an emphatic thumbs down by flocking to the hard-right anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) – an impressive result for a party formed just three years ago. The Christian Democrats missed out on two of the states.

The elections were Germany's first since the surge in refugee numbers last year. And the results were widely reported as a decisive victory for extremists. "The Right Wing Takes Flight," declared the English language version of Der Spiegel. "Crushing verdict on open-door migration," declared Britiain's Daily Mail's front page. "Merkel ... was given a bloody nose by voters", reported The Times.


However, the results were not as clear cut as the coverage implied. AfD attracted less than 15 per cent of the vote in the western states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, which is no more than the anti-immigration UK Independence Party did in last year's British general election. Even in Saxony-Anhalt, a poorer eastern state where the far right has long been active, less than a quarter of the vote went to AfD, which is less than Marine Le Pen's National Front records in its French heartland.

In all three states, more people voted for politicians who supported the Chancellor's immigration policies than the AfD, whose leader Frauke Petry suggested in January that German border police should be allowed to "use firearms if necessary" to "prevent illegal border crossings". Indeed, Baden-Württemberg was won by the Greens, whose regional leader Winfried Kretschmann was so supportive of Merkel, he said he prayed for her "health and wellbeing".

Lurch to the left

The numbers suggest that the real danger for Merkel, who faces a general election next year, is not the right-wing protest vote. (Germany's proportional voting system usually results in a coalition government and none of the parties will partner with AfD). Rather, it is dissent within her own ruling coalition where Christian Democrat backbenchers are dismayed about her "lurch" to the left and the CSU's Seehofer continues to criticise her leadership.

"It cannot be that the answer to the people after such an election result is: everything goes on as before," he said after the elections. "This is a tectonic shift in the political landscape in Germany. The key reason for the losses is refugee policy, there's no getting round it."

Merkel's critics believe she has helped turn AfD from a fringe player to a political force. But if they were hoping the regional elections would serve as a wake-up call for "Mutti", then they would not have been pleased with her reaction.

Having declared on the eve of the elections that a hardening of her own policies will soon curb migrant numbers and "from that point, the support that AdF is enjoying right now will drop off", Merkel then got her spokesman to repeat the message once the results were made public. "The German government will continue to pursue its refugee policy with all its might both at home and abroad," he said.

The declaration that Merkel will not be changing course has been described as her "Thatcher moment" after the UK prime minister's famous "the lady's not for turning" response to opposition to her economic policies.


Merkel suffered a sharp drop in her approval ratings in 2010, only to be emphatically re-elected three years later. She has shrugged off post-reunification concerns about an overly dominant Germany and earned a reputation as one of the continent's most effective leaders by sticking to her guns and employing a sense of calm that can sometimes make her appear divorced from reality. Her handling of the Greek debt crisis demonstrated these qualities as well as a sensitivity to German public opinion. In the end she held firm on the terms of a bailout while respecting the wishes of France and other southern European countries by allowing Greece to remain in the euro.

Out of step

But it would appear she has not read the mood of her people so well this time around. An increasing number of Germans are worried the influx of migrants will have a detrimental impact on their way of life. And while Merkel may be putting on a brave face after the "Super Sunday" results, the truth is she has been hardening her stance on asylum seekers.

About a fortnight before polling day she said the days of "waving refugees on" to Germany was over. Instead, she will be pushing for a European solution at a critical summit in Brussels on Thursday. Merkel argues border closures aimed at stopping the Balkan route used by many refugees will not solve the continent's immigration crisis. When Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann declared his country would accept a limited number of asylum seekers each day – a pronouncement that led to widespread border closures in the Balkans – Merkel described it as "not helpful".

At the heart of the deal Merkel wants to strike is a contentious and costly agreement for Turkey to accommodate large numbers of asylum seekers trying to enter Europe. Turkey is pushing for its citizens to be given visa-free travel rights within the Schengen zone in exchange for Turkey retaining Syrian refugees and taking back those caught trying to cross the Aegean. Yet many German MPs simply do not believe Turkey's authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can be trusted.

"We cannot exchange a refugee wave for a visa wave," said Andreas Scheuer, general secretary of the CSU. "Otherwise we'll go from the frying pan into the fire."

It is a view shared by several EU leaders who question Turkey's record on curbing freedom of speech and believe Merkel's Europe solution is simply an attempt to disperse the cost of her failed immigration policies throughout the 28-member bloc.

"I am extremely critical. I am seriously wondering whether we are taking ourselves and our values seriously or if we are throwing them overboard," Austrian interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner said in a radio interview last week.

"I think it's questionable if Turkey takes control of a newspaper critical of the government and then turns up here [in Brussels] three days later and puts a wish list on the table."

According to German media reports, some EU leaders are so mistrustful of Merkel that they believe the Turkish proposal was authored by her office while French President François Hollande only refrained from rejecting the proposal outright because he did not want expose a public rift with his Berlin counterpart.

Merkel may have emerged from the euro crisis as Europe's pre-eminent leader but her humanitarian response to the flood of refugees entering Europe has undone much of the goodwill built up among her partners. She has put her faith in a controversial deal with Turkey many of them do not trust. If it fails it seems likely she will suffer more than a bloody nose at the general election next year.