Remember the Pirate Party?

Back in September 2011, they boarded the Berlin city-state legislature, winning 8.9 percent of the vote. That put five parties in the legislature and complicated the coalition math. They highlighted the Greens’ generational challenges, put digital issues on leaders’ radar screens, and showed that discontent among Berlin voters was not limited to the eastern parts of the city.

After that breakthrough, they won seats in the state legislatures of Saarland (in March 2012), in Schleswig-Holstein (in May 2012), and in North Rhine-Wesphalia, Germany’s most populous state (also in May 2012). Looking forward to national elections in the fall of 2013, they polled as much as 13%. A fleet of black and orange sails was visible on the horizon.

Then what happened?

Scandals, splits, sinking. They were chronically short on money, early leaders proved unable to grow or govern the organization (sometimes the leaders were unable even to govern themselves), and then some things just got weird. They also had problems with rightist extremists in their ranks.

After their rise in 2012, in 2013 the Pirates just barely cleared 2 percent in Lower Saxony (January), fell below that in Bavaria (July) and hovered near that figure in the national elections in September. In the years that followed, the Pirates sailed away from the state legislatures they had so brazenly boarded in the heady days that followed their Berlin success.

In the national election in September 2017, they polled less than one half of 1 percent.

The tale of the Pirates is unlikely to be instructive for AfD, its leaders, or its voters. It should be. It is very similar to the tale of the Republikaner, which won seats in Baden-Württemburg, Berlin and Bremen. It is similar to the tale of the “Schill Party,” which won nearly 20 percent of the vote in Hamburg in 2001 and entered the legislature as the third strongest party. The NPD and DVU had similar trajectories with lower peaks.

The AfD has done what no party since the Greens has done: win enough votes in a national election to enter the Bundestag. And yet, at their first press conference after the election, one of their most prominent members, Frauke Petry, announced that she would not be part of the party caucus and walked out on live television. It’s unlikely to be the last division.

Dead parties tell their tales, even if no one in the latest sensation is inclined to listen.