BERLIN — 2009 has been dubbed Germany’s “super election year,” with voters in five states casting their ballots and a nationwide parliamentary election scheduled for September 27. Even more important than the number of votes are their potential implications for future politics. In theory, there are plenty of important campaign issues, such as the economy [...]

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  It was a Mae West moment (not something that happens a lot in German politics). I’m referring, of course, to the scene in the 1933 movie “I’m no Angel”, where the actress undulates lazily across a vaudeville stage before a mesmerized audience. Just as she slithers behind the curtain, she throws a single word [...]

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“Wealth for everyone”, Reichtum fär alle, it says on the election poster I see when I step out onto my street in central Berlin. Yet another of the satirical takeoffs that seem so popular this year? No: the gentleman in the dark three-piece suit smirking winningly from the placard is Gregor Gysi, one of the [...]

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Berlin is sweltering in the dog days of late August. Buses disgorge packs of sticky tourists to roam the city center. Government officials, meanwhile (their families enjoying the last week of the summer holidays in some cool spot), pore over their files in short-sleeved shirts, quietly cursing the architects who packed the capital of reunified [...]

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Most German surveys currently predict that incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel will be returned to her office in the September 27 elections – although all indications are that this time she will be at the helm of a center-right coalition of Christian Democrats and Liberals, and that there will not be a repeat of the current [...]

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