sean gallup / getty images more of the same Many voters fear that neither candidate will be able to tackle unemployment

GERMANY DECIDES 2005     A House Divided
	Both Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and challenger Angela Merkel say they'll change Germany. But will voters unite behind either one?
	By ANDREW PURVIS

Posted Sunday, September 11, 2005; 11.34BST
Angela Merkel's earliest political memory is of the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, when she was just 7. Merkel and her family had been vacationing in Bavaria and on Aug. 11 were returning to their home in Templin, a small town set amid sparkling lakes and lush forests about 80 km north of Berlin. Merkel's father, a Lutheran minister, sensed something was wrong; he'd seen bushels of barbed wire stacked in the woods on the drive back. The erection of the Wall started the next night. "Everybody was crying" at that Sunday's church service, Merkel recalled in a 2004 book of interviews called My Way. "Everyone was stunned."

If, as polls suggest, Merkel, the leader of the Christian Democrats, becomes Germany's first female Chancellor — and its first from the country's east — after Sunday's general election, she will have to start tearing down some walls of her own. Merkel has already promised to chip away at the barriers to economic growth that have left millions without jobs; Germany's unemployment rate of 11.6% is the highest it's been since World War II. And she might also take a whack at the continuing divide between east and west Germans. In a survey conducted earlier this year, 24% of west Germans (Wessis) said that they want the Wall put back up, compared with 12% 10 years ago; 12% of east Germans (Ossis) want the Wall back, too. Wessis resent the €90 billion in subsidies sent to the east every year; Ossis scorn Wessis' alleged arrogance — and their higher wages. Then there's the growing sense of cynicism that cuts off voters from politicians. Only 21% of Germans believe a Christian Democrat-led government would make a difference to their lives, according to a recent poll conducted by the Forsa polling agency. "Germans," says Manfred Güllner, head of Forsa, "are running out of patience with their politicians. They have heard it all before. The new government will have to prove itself immediately. They don't have much time."

Since the start of campaigning, Merkel's Christian Democratic Party (cdu) and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (csu) have consistently polled ahead of Gerhard Schröder's Social Democratic Party (spd). Last week, Merkel's forces were running at 42% to the spd's 34%. But the gap was closing by the day. The spd gained two percentage points in the week following a televised debate in which a tanned and earnest-looking Schröder edged the less telegenic Merkel. Sensing a momentum shift, the Chancellor hastily penciled in additional, last-minute campaign stops. The narrowing of the race increases the chances that the cdu, together with its preferred coalition partner, the Free Democrats (fdp), will fail to secure the majority it needs to form a government and instead will be forced into a grand coalition with the spd. "We've always said that the election will be decided in the two final weeks," Kajo Wasserhövel, spd campaign manager told Time.

Both parties have used the last days of the campaign to sharpen their attacks. "For seven years you have made empty promises," Merkel scolded Schröder, her fist pounding the air, during the last parliamentary session before the vote. "You are a man who has failed in regard to his party, himself and his perception of reality." Joschka Fischer, the Green Party chief and Foreign Minister, meanwhile warned of the cdu "taking a chainsaw to our social security system and ... hitting the poorest people the hardest." By the week's end the language was getting apocalyptic. angela is our katrina!, screamed a placard at the Friedrichstrasse train station in central Berlin, in a reference to the hurricane that devastated New Orleans. It went on: she will bring the neoconservatives to germany. soon we will have a catastrophe like in louisiana!

In its election platform, the cdu promises to reform the labor code, cut taxes and streamline social programs. But the party's campaign has stressed less its own pledges than the apparent failures of its opponents. five million without work, declared one poster in ominous spd red. a bankruptcy every 15 minutes! germany needs a change, read another. "The coalition of the spd and Green Party relied heavily on the state to solve problems," Christian Wulff, 46, the Governor of Lower Saxony and a leading member of Merkel's inner circle, told Time. "We put more faith in private industry. We believe that there should be more personal responsibility, not that the state can provide social security from cradle to grave."

The spd campaign, by contrast, has stressed Schröder's experience — he has been Chancellor since 1998 — and the alleged dangers posed by a "heartless" cdu. Party officials say the spd hopes to capitalize on the Chancellor's superior popularity ratings. It has also sought to galvanize stay-at-home voters and those considering other left-wing parties by warning that Germany is in danger of swinging violently to the right. "It is now perfectly clear how little substance there is in political conservatism today," Franz Müntefering, the pugnacious spd leader, said, sipping sparkling wine and smoking a cigarillo after the TV debate. "Mrs. Merkel talks about the problems of the millionaires and not about those of the simple worker. That's not the politics we would conduct."

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