Chancellor and Successor

Merkel's smile seems a bit forced as she's listening to Bavarian Premier Stoiber's joke during the CDU's convention in December 2004. While 88 percent of delegates voted for her as party chair, 94 percent had still done so four years earlier. Merkel's fate changed with the elections in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, where her party ended up taking over from the Social Democrats.

"Calculating speed constants of simple reactions using basic hydrocarbons as an example" -- it's questionable whether Angela Merkel can rely on her doctoral dissertation in her current line of work. The trained physicist joined politics relatively late: At 35, she began getting involved in the "Democratic Renewal" movement, which called for swift German unification and the introduction of a Western-style constitutional state in the former East Germany soon after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. In 1990, she joined the Christian Democratic Union and was elected deputy party leader one year later. In 1991, "Kohl's girl" also became federal minister for women and youth but still remained a little shy and introverted in public.

During the 2002 general elections, German voters for the first time got a chance to compare the two candidates, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (right) and his challenger, Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber. Media-savvy Schröder did much better on the small screen, according to polls. While the two men braced the cameras twice, Merkel and Schröder will only meet once for a debate after the CDU leader said she did not have enough time for a second round.

2004 wasn't a great year for Schröder either: In this picture he's holding his head during a budget debate in parliament on Sept. 10. Earlier in the year, he had suffered "one of the worst defeats" of his political career when the Christian Democrats took his home state of Lower Saxony in state elections. Further defeats in other states followed, with the last, in North Rhine-Westphalia in May 2005, leading Schröder to call for early elections.

In 1994, Merkel stood next to then Chancellor Helmut Kohl as people congratulated him after his narrow re-election on Oct. 16. Nicknamed "Kohl's girl," the young woman from eastern Germany was beginning to display signs of a power instinct and an emerging political style that was both sober and persistent. She did not want to be seen as belonging to a particular faction within the party, showed independence by pushing an "offering help instead of punishing" initiative during Germany's abortion debate and becoming one of the first leading politicians to meet with radical teenagers on the left and right.

On Nov. 16, 2001, Schröder underwent one of the harshest tests of his chancellorship by tying a vote on German military missions abroad to a vote of confidence. He received two more votes than needed and was confirmed as SPD leader three days later.

This 2004 painting by HA Schult shows a cool, but smiling Angela Merkel, but the CDU leader took quite a beating that year. She lost her health and financial policy experts, who resigned from their posts, and the CDU's secretary general had to step down because of controversial extra income.

When a scandal about illegal party donations shook the CDU in 1999, Merkel called for a complete and open investigation into the matter, even if such a move would harm her former mentor, Helmut Kohl. She publicly criticized Kohl's unwillingness to name the secret donors and became the first member of the party's leadership to sever ties with the former chancellor. "Kohl's girl" was emerging as a strong political leader.

Oskar Lafontaine hugs Schröder after the latter was elected chancellor on Oct. 27, 1998 with six more votes than his coalition of Social Democrats and Greens had in parliament. Lafontaine became finance minister, but resigned in 1999. He has since left the SPD and is now running against Schröder as one of the leaders of the new Left Party, which is doing well in opinion polls.

Attending his party's youth organization (Jusos) in 1980, former Chancellor Willy Brandt probably didn't think that the man sitting next to him would one day follow in his footsteps. Schröder, by then 35, had to resign as Jusos leader because of age limits. That didn't keep him from continuing in politics, however. A few months later, he was elected as a member of the German parliament, where he served for six years before returning to his home state of Lower Saxony to become SPD leader in the state parliament.

After the Christian Democrats lost the election, Merkel was elected her party's secretary general on Nov. 7, 1998. The new job required her to lift the CDU out of its post-election blues.

Schröder's face on some 2002 election posters in Berlin might have been disguised by graffiti sprayers, but the incumbent still managed to celebrate a victory on election night. While challenger Stoiber already had declared himself the winner soon after polling stations had closed, Schröder's SPD emerged as the strongest party in the early hours of Sept. 23, giving his red-green coalition government a chance to continue.

Schröder became the first German chancellor to appear on the country's most-watched TV show, "Wetten Dass..." He ended up offering a ride home in his limousine to the oldest woman in the audience after losing a bet in on the show. It was just another example of the new chancellor's ability to use the media to his advantage. He continues to perform well on television to this day.

Following the defeat in North Rhine-Westphalia, Schröder took the controversial step of deliberately asking members of his governing coalitions to fail him in a vote of confidence in parliament in order to trigger early elections. In this picture, on July 1, 2005, he's getting ready to drop his own white voting card in the box, which means that he abstained. Parliamentarians followed his request, and German President Horst Köhler dissolved parliament and announced new elections scheduled for Sept. 18.

In 2002, Merkel gave in to Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber and supported his candidacy in the general election. After his narrow defeat, she claimed the leadership of the parliamentary faction and kept expanding her power base within the conservative opposition.

Visiting the Gorleben nuclear waste storage site in 1995, Merkel didn't seem to be too concerned about getting close to radioactive material. A year earlier, she had switched portfolios and become Germany's minister for environment and reactor safety. The opposition jumped on the fact that she knew little about her new field of work, but Merkel tried to broker a consensus on controversial issues during her tenure.

On March 14, 1992, Schröder used the half-time break during a soccer match to get some exercise. Luckily, the soccer fan had a different line of work to rely on to make his living: In 1990, he had been elected state premier of Lower Saxony, a position he held until 1998.

On May 30, 2005, Merkel glowed as she faced the cameras as the first woman to become a candidate for German chancellor. Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber, who had challenged Schröder in 2002, announced that Merkel had been chosen to lead the party into the campaign this time.

Born in 1944, Gerhard Schröder joined the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) in 1963 and became an active member of the party's youth organization, the Young Socialists (Jusos). In 1971, the law student became leader of the Jusos in Hanover and climbed the ladder to the position of national Jusos leader in 1978. During his tenure, he helped improve relations between young party members and the SPD leadership.

For years, Merkel paid little to no attention to her looks: She wore no make-up and sported a no-frills hair-cut. Her look led a German rental car company to advertise its convertible cars by showing Merkel with a wild hair-do -- supposedly achieved by driving in an open car. "It's an interesting hair-styling suggestion," said Merkel, who became CDU leader in 2000. While she didn't go for that option, her appearance has become decidedly more glamorous in the run-up to her candidacy for the chancellorship.