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Buried in the forests of Thuringia lies a Cold War bunker where guests can experience a spartan night as a soldier in the former East Germany’s People’s Army.INA FASSBENDER/Reuters

Thuringia is a smallish state in central Germany known for its abundant forests and winter sports. It rarely makes national headlines. But on Friday, something happened there that will go down as a turning point in post-Cold War history.

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany's far-left party succeeded in taking power at the state level in Thuringia – the first such victory since the country was reunified in 1990. The party, which now goes by the name "die Linke," or "the Left," is the direct heir to the Communist Party that once ran East Germany.

The win in Thuringia has prompted worry and condemnation in Germany, especially in this year of commemorations of the injustices perpetrated by the former Communist regime.

Joachim Gauck, Germany's president, departed from his primarily ceremonial role to express unease over the prospect of a state-level victory by the Left, questioning whether the party could be "trusted."

On the eve of the vote to form the new state government, the German tabloid Bild published an article with photos of people who were killed trying to cross from Thuringia, then in East Germany, into West Germany. "Have you already forgotten these dead?" asked the headline.

Thuringia's new government has implications well beyond the state's borders. First, it's a measure of how far the Left has travelled in rehabilitating itself as a player in German politics. What's more, if the government succeeds and its popularity grows, it could represent a template for a political realignment at the national level.

In Thuringia, the Left is governing with a wafer-thin majority – just one seat in the state parliament – thanks to its coalition with two other parties, the centre-left Social Democrats and the environmentally minded Greens. (The combination of the three parties has been dubbed the Red-Red-Green, after their respective colours.)

The question is whether such a combination could be replicated at the national level, where Chancellor Angela Merkel and her centre-right Christian Democratic party have maintained a decade-long hold on power. Although the Social Democrats are part of Ms. Merkel's current coalition government in Berlin, at the state level in Thuringia, they threw their lot in with the Left, which some see as an experiment ahead of the next round of national elections due in 2017.

It is hard to imagine the Left playing a central role in national German politics – its foreign-policy planks include the abolition of NATO and its links to the East German Communist Party still repel many voters. The Left has tried, with varying degrees of success, to shed its association with East Germany. Before forming a coalition with the Social Democrats and Greens in Thuringia, the Left intensified its public condemnation of East Germany, describing it as "an unjust state."

Bodo Ramelow, the new Left premier of Thuringia, doesn't fit the stereotype of an old-school East German apparatchik. Mr. Ramelow, 53, grew up in West Germany and became a trade unionist; he is often shown in photographs with his pet terrier, named Attila. On the campaign trail, his constant companion at political rallies was a bust of Karl Marx.

Now the question is whether the reformed communists leading Thuringia's government can generate results for voters concerned about bread-and-butter issues like jobs and childcare. If they do, then this small state of forests and skiing may not be the only place in Germany painted Red-Red-Green.

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