Pretender Prince seeks the crown of King Kohl

"THE KOHL era is over," announces the man on the rostrum, puffing himself up into a regal pose as he milks the applause. Right on cue, devotees thrust banners with the fawning message "Gerhard, we thank you" into the air. "Our Gerhard" flashes his best movie star smile and switches to compassionate mode.

He speaks for 35 minutes without notes, flaying the government for its indifference to the plight of working people, the millionaires who stash their loot in Luxembourg, and lamenting the suffering of the sick who languish in the basement of a "two-tier health service". He offers a simple diagnosis for the country's ills: "The real problem is that in Bonn we have a government which hinders the creative energies of Germans."

But Gerhard Schroder, the 53-year-old "Prince of Hannover" who is so ready to declare the end of the Kohl era eight months before the national elections, has a real problem of his own. He is streets ahead of Helmut Kohl in the polls. Yet, before he gets a chance to wrestle with the big man, he must first make a stand here in the Land of Lower Saxony, a vast plain of asparagus fields and clumps of smokestack industry in north-west Germany, which he has governed for eight years.

If he wins well in two weeks' time, he might just get his Social Democrat Party's nomination. If he does not, Mr Kohl's fifth term is all but assured. The Chancellor has beaten off challengers from his own party and enjoys a commanding poll lead over all other opposition contenders.

Thus has an esoteric election been transformed into something akin to a US presidential primary. Mr Schroder, a naturally telegenic politician famed for a lifestyle plucked out of Dynasty, makes sure there is a bank of cameras wherever he goes and that his appearances are choreograph-ed to perfection. By the end of the campaign, he will have made the same speech - suitably adapted to local conditions - 140 times.

Here in Osnabruck' town hall he is preaching to trade unionists. They would prefer to live in a country run by Oskar Lafontaine, the big-spending Social Democrat who is almost alone in fancying his chances against Mr Kohl. He already got a bloody nose from eight years ago. Mr Schroder, on the other hand, can win, but the comrades wonder whether they would gain anything from his victory. And so he has to work audiences like the shop stewards of Osnabruck.

For a few minutes Schroder the Socialist eclipses Schroder the Businessman. Local companies "saved" by his nationalising zeal, only to be privatised later, are put on parade. Recently, he snatched a steel plant from the jaws of an Austrian predator to "secure jobs". He promises to boost its performance then flog it off on the stock exchange, hopefully at a profit to "stakeholders": the taxpayers who foot the bill of his forays. .

But even his detractors acknowledge that he knows a thing or two about the market economy, and enjoys the confidence of large sections of business.

How appropriate, therefore, that his local opponent is a dogmatic free- marketeer who is openly contemptuous of Mr Kohl's economics. And how ironic that the Chancellor must travel to Lower Saxony a dozen times to save a fellow Christian Democrat - whom he hates - from being savaged by the Social Democrat he fears most.

For his champion is 38-year old Christian Wulff, the leading "Young Wild One" - a motley collection of provincial tearaways constantly plotting against their leader in Bonn. Mr Wulff, who looks and acts like the perfect son-in-law, wears a stiff collar and tie almost any hour of night and day and professes to be a big fan of Phil Collins, is expected to lose.

Under any other circumstances, that would have given the Chancellor great satisfaction. But if the Kohl era is to go on, he must ensure that Mr Wulff loses and that Mr Lafontaine does the decent thing and stabs his friend Gerhard in the back.