BERLIN — To come here as an American on the eve of Germany’s next national political campaign is to go back in time to our own recent past, before the hacks and the (Wiki)leaks led to the paralyzing debate over whether Russia intervened in our presidential election.

I arrived in this idyllic, rational and not completely batty world capital (a strange sight to these American eyes) the week before last to find the country’s political world on tenterhooks, waiting for disruptive leaks but not knowing when or whether they might come.

A group of hackers — “not us,” say the Russians; “yeah, you,” say the Germans — was sitting on a huge trove of political secrets gathered over the past couple of years.

Its first big attack, on the Bundestag, the German Parliament, came in 2015. It vacuumed up some 16 gigabytes of emails and digital files from at least 16 members’ offices, including, officials here believe, that of Chancellor Angela Merkel. Hackers have since struck think tanks related to her party, the Christian Democratic Union, and to its junior coalition partners, the Social Democrats.