Is the sight of the German chancellor vainly urging back the floodwaters of the River Oder now a fitting metaphor for a man who seems, along with his government, to be inexorably sinking into a legislative and electoral morass?
Judge Matthias Fuchs told the state court in Frankfurt an der Oder: "We are convinced that the defendant committed manslaughter by neglect in eight cases".
Longtime journalist and Atlantic Yards watchdog Norman Oder, author of the Atlantic Yards Report blog, has used Freedom of Information Act requests and translators to comb through piles of documents.
Dr. Michael Minkenberg, a professor of political science at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) who has also taught at New York, Cornell and Columbia universities, said concern over immigration, law and order "and the feeling that things aren't what they used to be any more" are at the heart of support for Europe's radical right.