Political Division Having Arrived in Germany?

Yes.

Whatever you see in the US and view as dividing a group of people....it's pretty much arrived in Germany and in the beginning stages. 

ARD (public TV here, Channel One) wrote up a fine piece yesterday and goes over the basic problem.  Their chief emphasis?  They talked about the way that the Stuttgart-21 railway infrastructure project was picked up by political and agenda groups, and then how it split the city of Stuttgart into two camps....since that day....almost five years ago, nothing has really been the same.

A lot of the locals in Stuttgart begged for years that the city do something about the railway and local metro service, with growth causing more problems.....the city went through a 30-year discussion and came to a monumental plan.  I personally blame the group for creating such a massive plan and it would have been better to break this up into five or six stages, but they wanted one big chunk of money, and they wanted the city to be prepared for the next century (something that virtually no city in Germany is really thinking much about....most are lucky to think strictly about 20 to 30 years down the line).

But it's not limited to just Stuttgart.  You can go and browse over the BER airport project in Berlin, and find two to three basic camps, and they argue continually over the mess.  You can bring up the opera hall in Hamburg and find two basic camps arguing over it.

You can bring up the problem with refugees and migrants, and see several different camps who are politicizing it for their 'trend'.

The welfare discussion?  Already politized.

The effort to reshape and downsize the nuke-energy sector?  Already politized.

The Russian situation?  Already politized.

The BREXIT situation?  Already politized.

The level and intensity compared to the US?  I would suggest that it's about 20-percent of what you see in the US.  You have to remember.....there are talk-radio shows, no real CNN, and internet social behavior is more limited than what you'd you'd see in the US.  The chatter or politicization? I'd hand about half of the blame off to ARD or ZDF (the two national public TV networks).  The rest would be split up.

The effort I see here is that a fair number of intellectuals, lobbyists and political figures want to drag people into a 'save-the-world' crisis that they envision, and people fall into this.....HOOK, LINE, and SINKER. 

Perhaps it is part of this human desire to 'save-the-world', but you didn't use to have these manufactured at the pace of one per week.  And for Germans, it's a tough position because 'saving-the-world' seems to give you a great feeling.  Then you kinda wake up to realize that two of your best friends aren't that fired-up, and one of them wants absolutely nothing to do with this save-the-world discussion.....so they've cut you off on friendship.

This effort by ARD to restage or reboot political discussion?  They believe an introduction to moderation will help to make society comfortable with opposing views.  Their desire is to convince you to just talk about it and maybe you can handle these save-the-world situations in an appropriate fashion (maybe saving less of the world).

My view?  It's too late to do much to affect American society, and I have my doubts that you can reboot the German spiral.  It's hard to be optimistic.