A few years ago, I found an old calendar from 1979 in a box of things from my childhood. It was filled with the scribblings of a four-year-old. Stick figures, misshapen houses, the usual doodling. And there, in red ballpoint pen, three letters: SPD.

I grew up in the Ruhrgebiet, Germany’s industrial heartland. In those coal-and-steel cities, the Social Democrats, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, were not just a political party. They were the natural order. In my home region, it regularly pulled more than 50 percent of the vote.

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