Philipp missfelder is a tall, earnest 24-year-old, head of the youth organisation of Germany's Christian Democrats (CDU). Last August, he gave an interview in which he said that the health system would change over the next 30 years. Old people were living off future generations, and would eventually have to carry more of the cost of their own medical treatment, including hip replacements. "Before the interview, I was a normal student politician," he says wistfully. In the five days after it was published, he re-ceived 80 death threats. The police took them seriously enough to put a guard on his flat, his office and his parents' home. Furious letters still pour into the office of the CDU youth organisation. But its membership has risen, by 3,000, for the first time in 20 years. Young members of rival parties, the Social Democrats and the Greens, have been in touch. "I think I have hit a nerve with my generation," he says.
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