Will Potsdam swing right?

Guten Tag – or, as they more often say in these less formal times, Hallo – from constituency number 061, otherwise known as Potsdam, a city of parks, palaces, film studios and Prussian-ness. For the British, Potsdam will always be the place where the victorious Allies met to carve out the zones of Germany’s occupation – a division which led to Germany becoming two separate countries. After reunification in 1990, Potsdam was designated the capital of the state of Brandenburg.

In so far as many German cities have a complicated history, the history of Potsdam, less than half an hour from the centre of Berlin, is more complicated than most. The direct S-Bahn overground route into Berlin passes through Wannsee, where in 1942 Nazis are said to have plotted the ‘final solution’ to annihilate Europe’s Jews.