The German Pirates, inspired by the Swedish Pirate Party set up in 2006, stunned Germany -- and themselves -- when they entered their first state parliament in September 2011, by winning a whopping 8.9 percent of the vote in the Berlin city-state election. Representing the new generation of people who grew up with the Internet, the motley collection of Web-freedom campaigners looked set to shake up Germany's staid political scene and do for the Internet what the Greens had done for environmentalism back in the 1970s. They went on to score more election successes early last year in Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state. But the swift, easy victories appear to have gone to their heads, and were followed by highly-public internal power struggles which turned off voters in droves. At present the Pirates are polling at just 2 percent in nationwide voter surveys -- and are in serious danger of disappearing from Germany's political scene as quickly as they emerged.

Stefano Rocca Parmenides: The German Pirates, inspired by the Swedish Pirate...: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/guide-to-german-political-parties-a-886188-8.html