Right wing Bavarian joins race for Chancellor Â

Gerhard Schröder, Germany's Chancellor, will face Edmund Stoiber, a tough-talking right-wing Bavarian, in September's general election. The announcement yesterday set the stage for what is likely to be the country's most bitter post-war political battle.

Mr Stoiber, leader of the Bavarian Christian-Social Union, was acclaimed as the best candidate for Chancellor by his fiercest opponent, Angela Merkel. Although she remains the leader of the Christian Democrat Union, the larger of the two conservative sister parties, Ms Merkel made way, acknowledging her party would be better off with Mr Stoiber.

"I have always said that the person with the best chance of winning the elections should be the Chancellor candidate," Ms Merkel said. "I think I have acted responsibly, and I'm rather proud of that."

Mr Stoiber, an austere 60-year-old workaholic, has been the Prime Minister of Bavaria since 1993, presiding over a dynamic economy which boasts the lowest unemployment rate in Germany. Although he has toned down his Euroscepticism in recent years, Mr Stoiber is the most nationalistic politician in the mainstream.

He opposes immigration and demands foreigners settled in Germany adopt German ways. His government once "repat-riated" to Turkey a teenage offender born in Germany. Not since 1980, when Mr Stoiber's Bavarian mentor, Franz Josef Strauss, led the conservative campaign and narrowly lost to Helmut Schmidt, has German democracy been presented with such contrasting choices.

The election will pit the north German bon vivant Mr Schröder against a southern teetotaller. Whereas the Chancellor stands for multiculturalism, his challenger champions enduring German values.

Mr Schröder is seen by many voters as malleable – a political drifter. Mr Stoiber is a hard-as-nails conservative, occupying the hang-'em-and-flog-'em end of the German political spectrum.

The Chancellor is on his fourth marriage – the previous one was shattered by his adultery. Mr Stoiber is a happily married devout Catholic with three grown-up children.

Mr Schröder is a self-proclaimed moderniser, the architect of the "Berlin Republic": a country at ease with itself after coming to terms with its appalling history. Mr Stoiber strives to combine modernity with tradition, in the spirit of Bavaria's "laptop and lederhosen" philosophy.

Ms Merkel, the middle-of-the road alternative, had failed to convince voters. Every opinion poll in the country showed she would have had no chance against the Chancellor.

Mr Stoiber, on the other hand, boasts an impressive record of election victories and runs a highly efficient administration. Apart from a minor post in Helmut Kohl's last cabinet, Ms Merkel had no administrative experience. Even in her native eastern Germany, Mr Stoiber eclipses her in popularity.

She is blamed for the party's drift, for successive regional election defeats, and even for the depression that gripped the party after former chancellor Helmut Kohl's funding scandals.

The initial euphoria following her election less than two years ago quickly evaporated. The voters were ready for an East German woman to lead them, but she could not say where she was taking them.

After countless U-turns and spectacular somersaults, hardly anyone knows where Ms Merkel stands.

The latest polls, conducted before yesterday's announcement, put the conservative block narrowly ahead of the governing Social Democrats.

Mr Schröder faces a bruising election race, and one he has every chance of losing.