By Sarah Marsh and Thomas Escritt
BERLIN (Reuters) -The far right’s first victory in a German state election in the post-war era prompted soul-searching in Berlin on Monday, but Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s battered and unloved coalition looked as if it would hold together.
All three parties in Scholz’s centre-left coalition suffered painful losses while the nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and a new anti-establishment populist party booked record gains in the eastern states of Thuringia and Saxony on Sunday.
Scholz, a Social Democrat, described the results as “bitter” but Finance Minister Christian Lindner rejected suggestions that his neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), who fared the worst of all coalition partners, should quit the government.
With a year to go to national elections, the results are nonetheless likely to foment tensions in a coalition riven by ideological differences and struggling to deal with the fallout from the Ukraine war including a cost-of-living crisis.
The AfD became the first …