Hints and tips:
...Once upon a time, West German politics was exceptionally stable, characterised by two big parties — the Christian Democrats (and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) and the SPD — plus...
...Liisi LaFontaine invests Satine with thoughtful integrity and has a lovely, soaring voice; Jamie Bogyo’s Christian is appealingly tender and impetuous....
...Political observers remember him as a brilliant orator whose duels with the then Social Democratic finance minister Oskar Lafontaine were legendary....
...Should she make it to the chancellery, she will have succeeded where her fellow Saarlander, the hard-left Oskar Lafontaine, failed....
...“It hits the zeitgeist,” says Eike-Christian Hornig, political scientist at the Technical University Darmstadt....
...Mr Lafontaine headed the regional government in 1985-98, the only time the CDU lost its grip on power....
...The Saarland is the heartland of Oskar Lafontaine, who was previously an SDP federal finance minister but defected to the far-left Linke party....
...Many political analysts say the SPD needs to forge an alliance with the Left to improve its chances of challenging the centre-right coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats....
...They preferred the promise of “blooming landscapes” made by Helmut Kohl, the Christian Democrat chancellor and mastermind of reunification, against whom Lafontaine was running....
...The youthful, carefully unshaven triathlete is the Social Democratic challenger to Peter Müller, the state’s Christian Democratic premier....
...Today there are five (two of whom head grand coalitions with chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.)...
...Jamaica A black-yellow-green combination of Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), Liberals (FDP) and Greens is seen as highly unlikely....
...Within hours of news of Germany’s role, Oskar Lafontaine, party co-leader, was again calling for troops to come home....
...For now, the important thing is the SPD has realised it cannot out-Lafontaine Mr Lafontaine....
...Sigmar Gabriel, the SPD environment minister, said Ms Ypsilanti risked becoming a puppet of Oskar Lafontaine....
...In response, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its coalition allies the Social Democrats have shifted leftwards by adopting measures advocated by the Left party, including higher...
...This week, Maybrit Illner, host of the eponymous ZDF show, dropped her round-table format for a heated one-on-one debate between Mr Merz and Oskar Lafontaine, the Left party’s formidable chairman....
...But the chancellor left direct attacks on Mr Steinmeier, the centrist foreign minister, to others in her party to avoid contributing to fears the three-year-old coalition of Christian and Social Democrats...
...The proposals on Monday by the junior partner in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat-led “grand coalition” appeared aimed at bolstering the left-wing appeal of the crisis-ridden SPD as it gears...
...He was a good ally for the Christian Democrat chancellor, but he was losing the battle for the support of his own Social Democratic party....
...Oskar Lafontaine, Germany’s left-wing maverick politician, has announced that he will travel to Tehran this month to seek a solution to the crisis....
...That label might be better attached to Oskar Lafontaine, the champagne socialist and former SPD finance minister who has returned to the fray as leader of the Left party, in alliance with the former Communists...
...The Christian Democrats (CDU) and the Free Democrats (FDP), the two national parties of the centre-right, offer some reforms in labour markets....
...In May 2004, supported by Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party, he defeated chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s preferred candidate to become Germany’s ninth post-war president....
...Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democratic Party, for instance, is openly playing with the thought of forming a grand coalition with Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union as it becomes clear that...
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