Gerhard Schroeder:
Upstart at the chancellor's gate

• A hint of charisma
• 'I'm a climber'
• Few convictions?
• No Tony Blair

(CNN) -- In 1982, the year that Helmut Kohl deposed Helmut Schmidt as chancellor of Germany, an obscure and inebriated legislator from Lower Saxony shook the gate at the chancellor's office in Bonn one night and shouted, "I want to get in there!"

The incident was replayed in earnest this year, and Gerhard Schroeder, then an impetuous young Social Democrat legislator and now premier of Lower Saxony, got his wish.

Video: Schroeder on the campaign trail On Germany's future View QuickTime On the economy... View QuickTime On his vision for Germany View QuickTime Please enable Javascript

On September 27, Schroeder was chosen to be the next chancellor of Germany, unseating Kohl after the latter had served four four-year terms.

"After 16 years, the Kohl era is at an end," Schroeder told cheering supporters at his party's headquarters after the polls closed. He said he would work for "economic stability and development, domestic security and continuity in foreign affairs."

Schroeder's election signals a changing of the guard, for he becomes the first postwar German leader who is too young to remember World War II.

It also signals the continuation of a trend away from conservative governments in the West led by Kohl, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to younger, left-of-center politicians like Schroeder, Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

'A hint of charisma'

In trumpeting his "New Center" movement, Schroeder encouraged the perception that he was one of a new breed. And to a certain extent, he is.

Next to the ponderous Kohl, the bluff and combative Schroeder seemed youthful, telegenic and witty, a brisk, media-savvy politician in a stodgy political landscape.

He favors dark suits, Cuban cigars and pretty, personable wives -- and he has had four of the latter. Asked about his recent divorce from his popular third wife, Hiltrud, and subsequent marriage to journalist Doris Koepf, who is 19 years his junior, Schroeder said, "It is proof of my earnestness."

He reportedly joked to Doris that he changes wives every 12 years, and she replied, "Next time, you'll need someone to push your wheelchair."

"For the first time since Willy Brandt, the Social Democrats have a candidate with a hint of charisma," wrote the German magazine Der Spiegel. "For the first time since Helmut Schmidt, someone who at least is interested in economics."

The Boston Globe noted that in Schroeder the Social Democrats also have a "masterful media handler" who can "turn a hostile interview into a graceful stump speech."

Kohl, for his part, tried to dismiss Schroeder as "a media event," but German voters found him a refreshing alternative to Kohl.

'I'm a climber'

Schroeder was born in the Lower Saxony town of Mossenberg in 1944, the year his laborer father was killed while serving with the German army in Romania. His mother took to cleaning homes during the desperate, postwar years to feed her five children.

Schroeder himself held a number of part-time jobs while working toward a law degree, and once promised his mother that some day he would drive up to her door in a Mercedes. He kept his word in 1990 when he took her to lunch on her 80th birthday in an official, silver-gray Mercedes.

"I'm a climber," Schroeder has said. "The label doesn't bother me. It's the truth."

Special Report: Germany Votes News: Latest Election News CNN Video Reports Analysis: What's at stake? The View from Berlin East-West Divided Still Background: Kohl Profile Schroeder Profile Interactive Features: Parties in the Bundestag Election Process Primer Election Message Board

His characteristic bluntness was also on display at a gathering of the Social Democrats in 1993. "There are some who have been saying lately that I have character flaws," he told the delegates. "And you know what? That's true."

Schroeder was a legislator from 1980 to 1986 and has been premier of Lower Saxony since 1990, but his flaws came in for particularly close scrutiny during this year's campaign.

Few convictions?

Chief among the criticisms was that Schroeder is an opportunist who lacks abiding convictions.

He admits, for example, that when he was younger he was a Marxist, but more recently he has been faulted for fraternizing too much with big business. (As premier of Lower Saxony, Schroeder has served on the board of Volkswagen, the state's largest employer and a company the state has invested in.)

Schroeder also was skeptical of the euro as the common currency of Europe at one time, but now says he supports it. And while the German tax system clearly needs overhauling, Schroeder has been accused of opposing Kohl's reforms solely for political reasons.

Last spring, he was criticized for claiming to be an ardent free-market advocate, but then nationalizing a barely profitable steel company to keep it from being sold to an Austrian company.

Schroeder says he did it to save jobs, but the company said there were no plans to cut jobs. And cynics noted that Schroeder acted just before the Lower Saxony regional elections that determined his viability as a candidate for chancellor.

Heribert Prantl, a newspaper commentator, told The New York Times that Schroeder "is not someone whose heart and soul depend on a particular message. He can change, and one twist suits him as well as the next. What Schroeder likes is whatever is liked by the public he needs at the time."

No Tony Blair

Schroeder claims to be a pro-business politician with fresh new ideas, but The Economist notes that "his rhetoric has been better than his record." Lower Saxony's unemployment is higher than the German average, and it has some of the highest debt as well.

Indeed, said the German newspaper Die Ziet after comparing Schroeder's performance with that of Britain's Blair, "there is little reason to ... regard Schroeder as a German version of ... Blair."

Nevertheless, in a country grown stale after 16 years of Kohl, Schroeder successfully sold himself as a breath of fresh air. And as he told party members in April, he is educable.

"I've learned to work in a disciplined manner," he told them, "and to tell the difference between what's desirable and what's feasible."