Adding insult to injury, one day after Germany's historic loss to Mexico (which resulted in a man-made earthquake in USA's southern neighbor), Europe's most important country is facing the "Destiny Day" to a political crisis like no other in its recent history.

For almost 13 years as chancellor, Handeslblatt writes this morning, Angela Merkel managed to outmaneuver all rivals, schemers and plotters.

"But her time could finally be up."

Two of her Christian-Democratic predecessors, Konrad Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard, fell from power not after losing the electorate, but after losing the support of their own parliamentary bloc. That may now be Merkel's fate, too.

Today, the top brass of her party, the CDU, and its Bavarian frenemies, the CSU, are meeting separately in Berlin and Munich, to agree on a common course about the coming days and weeks, however chances of a deal appear increasingly remote: according to Handelsblatt, Horst Seehofer, the CSU's boss, federal interior minister and perennial Merkel gadfly, told one newspaper that he "can't work with that woman anymore."