Frankly, I don't get that outrage. In Germany democracy is in a strange state, for many years, since 2005, two biggest parties formed "grand coalition", so, in practice, in Germany there was no opposition. Imagine Democrats and Republicans forming together government in US.

From my understanding opposition is something very important in democratic system, it servers as a controller of the ruling party and put on it some pressure to do actually something useful.

In addition opposition is something natural, people tend not to agree on everything and should have right to express that, also through democratic system mechanisms.

Since there was no opposition in Germany, it has been created, this was a natural process. The fact that AfD has raised as main opposition force simply tells that ruling parties simply missed something people are afraid of or need. Pointing out failures of the ruling party is the role of the opposition and that happens in Germany now.

Someone might not like AfD (I don't), but it appears it attracted some people, if someone plans to ignore them, this is not a good idea.

Not that long ago someone decided that it is not a problem to ignore humiliated people who came back home from battle fields of I World War straight into poverty, however there was a certain Austrian painter, who managed to attract them very skillfully. The rest of the history is well known.