In Saarland they still apply, the laws of the old Federal Republic.
The SPD and CDU are the size of a people's party and are fighting for victory in the state elections on Sunday.
The small parties are still really small, they are struggling with the five percent hurdle.
The only difference from before is that in addition to the FDP and the Greens, there are also the AfD and the Left Party.
Helen Bubrowski
Political correspondent in Berlin.
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Johannes Leithauser
Political correspondent in Berlin.
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For the left, the result in the Saar is a catastrophe, the party has lost more than ten percentage points, ends up at 2.6 percent according to the preliminary official result and will not be represented in the state parliament.
Janine Wissler makes no effort to hide her disappointment.
It was a "bitter evening, a disastrous result," says the party leader on ARD, but then has to wait a moment because the broadcaster wants to show the appearance of SPD election winner Anke Rehlinger.
Then Wissler talks about the difficult conditions in Saarland and announces “good opposition work” against the traffic light for Berlin.
Lafontaine left Faction in a disastrous state
Five years ago, the Saarland was still the pride of the party in the West.
It won 12.8 percent there in 2017, while the left in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia failed to enter the state parliaments.
In the elections in the East, the party was no longer able to build on its old successes, and in Brandenburg and Saxony it literally collapsed.
In the federal elections in autumn, the party only got 4.9 percent of the votes.
A parliamentary group of just 39 MPs only exists because the party has won three direct mandates.
Oskar Lafontaine, the former party chairman, was a guarantee for good results in Saarland for years.
But already in autumn he had declared that he would not compete again this time.
It was clear that the left was missing the draft horse.
But not only that: Lafontaine left the faction he had led for years in a completely desolate state.
A week ago, he finally left the party, not without hitting out at former party friends again.
With this step he forestalled a party expulsion.
That should have been the last nail in the coffin.
Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the party has lost credibility across the country.
The density of Putin friends is particularly high in the Left Party, and left-wing politicians have repeatedly argued with the “legitimate security interests of Russia”.
After the war of aggression began, Amira Mohamed Ali, the leader of the parliamentary group in the Bundestag, had to admit that it was a mistake.
But then seven MPs declared that the eastward expansion of NATO had a “significant share of responsibility” for the escalation.
One of the group is Sahra Wagenknecht, Lafontaine's wife.
It didn't help the left much that Gregor Gysi, the parliamentary group's foreign policy spokesman, sharply rejected this account.
In the past week there was another low point in the history of the past few months, which has been rich in low points.
André Hahn, member of the Bundestag for the left, was not re-elected to the parliamentary oversight body that controls the intelligence services.
He has been a member of the secret committee since 2013 and was even its deputy chairman for the first four years.
Hahn is respected across party lines, there was never any trouble about him.
When asked why the MPs were now refusing him to move back in, the left in Berlin said the following these days: "Well, others just like to kick when you're lying on the ground."