Kässmann, 51, a regular on television talk shows and known in the media as the "pop bishop," was considered something of a controversial candidate to lead Germany's roughly 25 million Protestants because she is divorced. But she won 132 of 142 votes at a synod of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), an umbrella group for 22 Lutheran, Reformed and United Churches, in the vote to replace the retiring Berlin Bishop Wolfgang Huber, 67, as EKD chairman.

"The election sends a signal to the Church worldwide that God calls us to leadership without consideration of gender, color or descent," Rev. Ishmael Noko, general-secretary of the Lutheran World Federation, told the Ecumenical News International news agency at the synod in Ulm.

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The case arose in 2007 when the head of a school in Berlin, which has a strong secular tradition, forbid a boy and his friends from kneeling on their jackets to pray where they could be seen by other pupils.

The school argued it was religiously "neutral" but the boy, whose mother is Turkish and father is a German who converted to Islam, decided to go to court.

And they won.

Judge Uwe Wegener of Berlin's Administrative Court wrote: "The plaintiff credibly showed he feels a religious obligation to pray according to Islamic custom five times a day at specific times."

In the ruling, which makes clear the boy must pray outside lesson times to avoid disruption, the court also said Germany's constitution guaranteed an individual the right to manifest one's belief -- which includes praying.

The case raises some interesting questions, including to what extent a Muslim can be flexible in delaying prayers and whether an institution like a school should have to put aside rooms for worship.

Religious leaders of various faiths welcomed the court decision. The KRM Coordinating Council for Muslims in Germany said it was pleased about the respect shown towards other peoples' beliefs. "The ruling confirms the confidence Muslims have in our rule of law," it said.

Stefan Foerner, spokesman for Berlin's Roman Catholic archdiocese, was quoted in the popular daily Bild as saying the ruling strengthened the freedom of religious expression.

But media also reported teachers are worried the decision may encourage pupils to demand new prayer rooms in schools.

Berlin, home to Germany's largest Muslim community, may be a slighly special case due to an institutionalised secular streak -- for example, it is one of Germany's only states to have compulsory ethics lessions and only optional religion courses.

How flexible should schools and individuals be about prayers?

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But German Chancellor Angela Merkel, seeking re-election on Sunday, has been confronted with a new kind of protest during her final campaign rallies: flashmobs.

The mobs, groups of people summoned over the Internet to show up at a specific time and place to do something unusual, have materialised at several election events in the last week to wave flags and banners and heckle the unsuspecting Merkel.

Mostly, they have been chanting "Yeahhhh!" after every sentence she utters and the slogan is meant as an ironic expression of support.

It may not sound like the most damaging critique, but Merkel has cottoned on to the flashmobs and now even addresses them at the rallies as "My young friends from the Internet".

So is this a new form of political protest or just a bit of fun?

Blogger Rene Walter, who writes for nerdcore, says there is a serious idea behind the light-hearted gatherings.

"We are not just going to swallow the election messages, we are spitting back the rubbish Merkel speaks in the ironic form of a "Yeahhh!", he says in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily.

Many involved in the flashmobs support the Pirate Party, who are popular among young voters and oppose what they say is censorship of the Internet that has been brought in under Merkel's government.

One thing is for sure. Flashmobs are injecting some much-needed spontaneity into the final days of a campaign which many voters think has been the most turgid in decades.

But are flashmobs here to stay? Could they become the political protest movement of the Internet age?

"I haven't got a job, nor have my mates. Politicians don't care," said Ismet Akgul, 19, standing with friends outside an amusement arcade in the Marxloh suburb where about 60 percent of the population has immigrant, in most cases Turkish, roots. "Firms see a foreign name on an application form and chuck it in the bin."

(Photo: Merkez mosque in Duisburg, 26 Oct 2008/Ina Fassbender)

Of the roughly 2.8 million people in Germany with Turkish roots, only about 600,000 can vote, many failing to register or acquire citizenship. Only five lawmakers out of 614 in the Bundestag (lower house of parliament)  have Turkish origins.

The main parties in Duisburg, which is traditionally an SPD stronghold but has just re-elected its first conservative mayor, are targeting the Turkish community with special campaign events and posters and adverts in Turkish.

"We neglected immigrant voters for too long. But we've woken up now and are starting to win them over," said Thomas Mahlberg, a conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) lawmaker from Duisburg.

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in Britain, the parties hold daily news conferences, broadcast live, where leaders attempt to set an agenda for the day -- be it on health, tax or education -- and then get grilled by the press corps.

In Germany there is no equivalent. In fact, there are not even regular weekly news conferences with conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Social Democrat (SPD) rival Frank-Walter Steinmeier. 

Instead, they seek direct contact with voters by holding speeches in town squares and, especially in the southern state of Bavaria, beer tents.

The challengers are not interested in playing to the media because the election does not dominate the German headlines as much as it does in Britain.

One reason for the particularly strong contrast this year is the duo fighting the German election. Merkel and Steinmeier are shying away from personal attacks as they know they may have to share power again after the Sept. 27 vote.

And few dispute that either challenger competes with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair or opposition leader David Cameron -- let alone U.S. President Barack Obama -- on charisma.

Indeed, former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's media instincts -- on display in the 2002 campaign when he waded through flooded areas in wellington boots -- stood out because they were an exception.

But the differerences run deeper than individuals.

The national media plays a far bigger role for British politicians. Clinching the backing of The Sun tabloid was a pivotal moment for Blair before his 1997 landslide.

In this environment, pictures and soundbites become all-important for politicians to get their message across.

An enduring image of 2005's UK election was when Blair bought his arch-rival Gordon Brown an ice cream in a show of unity designed to shake off rumours the two were not speaking.

In Germany, the regionally fragmented newspaper landscape means no single headline carries as much weight.

In addition, the overall relationship between politicians and media is very different.

Germany's top politicians are never subjected to the aggressive, at times irreverent, probing British politicans get from BBC interviewers John Humphrys or Jeremy Paxman. 

Although German reporters do not stand up when Merkel enters the room, as their U.S. counterparts do for the President, there is a high degree of respect discernible among Berlin's political hacks who tend to ask thoughtful, serious questions rather than try to catch out their subjects.

So what does this reflect?

Germany's relatively short tradition of parliamentary democracy, compared to that of Britain, France and the United States, has -- some commentators argue -- nurtured a greater deference to authority than in Britain.

Germany adopted a political system after World War Two carefully designed to avoid the weaknesses of the Weimar Republic -- a fragmented system that had enabled Hitler's rise to power.

Today's system makes for stable but moderate coalition governments which cannot implement radical reforms in the tradition of, say Britain's Margaret Thatcher, say analysts.

A series of checks and balances and the distribution of power to the 16 federal states limit politicians in what they can do.

Some commentators argue an unforgiving British media does the job the country's political system fails to do.

For example, it is almost unthinkable that a German reporter would pose the question: "Do you have blood on your hands?" as a British reporter asked Blair after the death of David Kelly, a government weapons expert who was found dead after being linked to a BBC report stating the government had exaggerated the case for going to war in Iraq.

The political setup suits Germans who these days prefer incremental change and predictable politicians to charismatic leaders with radical ideas, say political scientists, who argue the many merits of the German structure.

But are the benefits of the German system a recipe for a turgid election campaign?

The club has its home in Gelsenkirchen in Germany's industrial heartland and immigrants make up about a third of the town's population. Most of them have a Turkish background. Germany's biggest mosque was opened in nearby Duisburg last year and many Schalke supporters are Muslims, as chat rooms like this one point out.

The lines in question are: "Mohammad was a Prophet who doesn't understand football" although the words that follow seem positive: "But from all the beautiful colours he came up with blue and white." Schalke's colours are blue and white.

The club, which plays in Germany's Bundesliga top league and has some of the country's most ardent fans, is taking the complaints seriously. A spokesman has said Schalke has asked an Islamic expert to analyse the text.

But what is most striking is that the song is not new. Some say it dates back to 1924.  So why has it suddenly started to offend Muslims?

The answer may lie in the mounting resentment in Germany's Muslim community after politicians were slow to condemn the murder of an Egyptian woman in a court in eastern Germany about a month ago, which we blogged about at the time. The crime was widely viewed as racially motivated.

Germany's Central Council of Muslims has summed up the situation. "Many Muslims in Germany no longer have a sense of security. Nerves are wearing thin," General-Secretary Aiman Mazyek was quoted as saying in Bild daily, adding he did not believe the club had malicious intentions. 

This storm is another sign of just how tense community relations are in Germany. Maybe a passion for soccer can help overcome some of the divisions.

It took Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has talked much about boosting the integration of Germany's roughly 3.5 million Muslims, several days to condemn the killing, perpetrated by a German of Russian origin suspected of being a neo-Nazi.

Suddenly, the government is trying to soothe tensions to avert a potential storm similar to the violence which erupted over Denmark's publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. And less than three-months before an election, politicians are also worried about security -- intelligence services say Germany is already a target due to its deployment of troops in Afghanistan.

(Photo: Memorial gathering in Dresden - sign says "Racism kills," 11 July 2009/Fabrizio Bensch)

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said the U.N. should condemn Germany for the killing. Last week, hundreds of mourners in Alexandria, Egypt, protested at the funeral of the slain woman, Marwa El-Sherbiny. Egyptian media have made much of the incident and some Egyptians have even called for a boycott of German products.

"Germany has no room for xenophobia or Islamophobia," Merkel's spokesman told reporters when pressed on the subject at a news conference, adding political failings had not led to the killing. Some politicians attended a memorial ceremony for the victim at the weekend.

However, the tragedy has raised questions -- about the police, as well as politicians', response.

The July 1 killing took place in a court where Marwa El-Sherbiny, pregnant and a mother of a three-year-old, was testifying against the attacker. He was appealing his conviction for insulting her by calling her an "Islamist", "terrorist" and "slut" when she asked him to make room for her son to play on swings in a playground.

The killer not only stabbed her 18 times but also stabbed her husband. To make matters worse, police officers shot the husband, mistaking him for the attacker. He was in a coma for several days.

(Photo: Karachi protest against murder, 10 July 2009/Athar Hussain)

When Merkel fails to respond quickly to hate-crimes like this one, or woos her largely Catholic Christian Democrats (CDU) by saying that mosque minarets should be no taller than church steeples, she risks undoing some of the goodwill she has fostered with her official dialogue with Germany's Muslim community.

Some groups, including the Central Council of Muslims in Germany, say Islamophobia has long been a phenomenon and want Merkel to describe the killing as a "brutal, racist, Islamophobic murder".

Even the German media is only starting to link the attack to xenophobic attitudes.

Could this incident unleash an outburst of violence? And to what extent do you think Germans are conditioned to accept a degree of Islamophobia?

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But the anti-nuclear Social Democrats (SPD), who have shared power with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives since 2005, may be disappointed if they had hoped to win votes from it.

Merkel, forced to accept a phaseout of Germany's atomic plants under its coalition deal with the SPD, is campaigning on extending the lifespan of nuclear plants which are deemed safe.

By contrast, the SPD is committed to the phaseout which it introduced in a previous alliance with the Greens, and Saturday's failed restart at the ageing Kruemmel plant in northern Germany has galvanised some of its members into action.

The SPD, trailing Merkel's conservative camp by more than 16 percentage points and at risk of losing its role in government, is trying to do all it can to mobilise its traditional supporters before the Sept. 27 vote.

SPD Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel pounced on the incident, swiftly taking to the airwaves to push his case that the phaseout should be accelerated. And on Wednesday a Berlin newspaper was strategically leaked a government statement, albeit from 2006-07, which said safety standards at older plants like Kruemmel were not as high as at more modern reactors.

Germans have for decades nurtured an aversion to atomic energy, which supplies just under 30 percent of their power needs.

But as other European countries have started to revive nuclear, opinion has started to shift due mainly to higher energy prices and fears about supply. Pollsters say Germans are now pretty evenly split on whether to support a later decommissioning of plants.

In their campaign manifesto, conservatives argue nuclear is an important part of the energy mix, at least until renewable sources are fully commercially viable.

"If the SPD tries to make this a big election topic, it will not have much success. Public opinion is moving towards an acceptance of atomic energy," said Klaus-Peter Schoeppner, head of Emnid pollsters.

Guttenberg, a rising star in Merkel's conservative camp, had argued for an Opel insolvency in the days preceding the deal.

He astonished reporters when he expressed objections to the agreement just minutes after the announcement in the early hours of Saturday that German taxpayers would help tide over Opel's operations until General Motors concluded an agreement to sell Opel to a group led by Canadian supplier Magna.

"I want to say that, in a very difficult discussion process ... I personally came to a different view of the risks," said Guttenberg, a Bavarian who has been economy minister for less than four months. There are no Opel plants in Bavaria.

There are strong rumours he threatened to resign after his opposition to the deal was ignored and at the weekend Guttenberg, seen by some as a possible future chancellor, continued his attack.

"The threat is the state can be blackmailed if it is overly generous with help even once," the media-friendly minister told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper in remarks that have given ammunition to his political foes.

Guttenberg's comments have gone down well with some in his own conservative camp and could even strengthen his position with them in the long run, especially if he is proved right and the deal turns out badly. 

Merkel has backed him so far, saying on Monday she was grateful to him "for repeatedly sticking his finger in the wound".

However, he has made himself an easy target for the Social Democrats (SPD), who share power with Merkel's conservatives but will oppose them in September's election.

Ministers have been lining up to attack him. SPD Chairman Franz Muentefering accused him of undermining Opel's negotiating position. Others have portrayed him as a ranting right winger.

Probably most damaging of all, former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, one of Germany's most savvy campaigners, has ridiculed him as the "Baron from Bavaria", a name likely to stick.

He has homed in on two things that anger many Germans -- his aristocratic roots and his wealth, which could prove to be a drawback during an election campaign fought against the backdrop of a deep recession.

Probably more important, Schroeder has reminded voters that Guttenberg is Bavarian. No member of Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) , sister party of Merkel's Christian Democrats, has become chancellor, largely because of a strong antipathy among many Germans towards the prosperous, proud southern German state.

Complete with a big picture of Hitler, the headline is deliberately provocative and could even hurt relations with Germany's neighbours.

Spiegel's take on the deportation of Ukrainian-born Nazi war crimes suspect John Demjanjuk, who faces charges he helped murder at least 29,000 Jews at the Sobibor death camp in 1943, is groundbreaking as it tackles a subject Germans have so far given little thought to.

The uncomfortable thesis is that while Germans were responsible for the Holocaust, Nazis had help from a huge number of non-Germans in neighbouring countries. And most of those countries have been far slower than Germany to take a proper look at their past.

"With this accused man (Demjanjuk), the foreign perpetrators come into focus, those men who until now have been given surprisingly little attention: Ukrainian gendarmes, Latvian auxiliary policeman, Romanian soldiers or Hungarian railway workers. Also Polish farmers, Dutch land register officials, French mayors, Norwegian ministers, Italian soldiers -- they were all plainly involved in the crime -- the Holocaust," writes Der Spiegel.

It cites a historian who estimates more than 200,000 non-Germans took part in the Holocaust and the magazine also explores the reasons for the participation of others.

Nazis forced concentration camp and extermination camp guards, like Demjanjuk who had been in the Red Army and taken prisoner, to help with the dirty work. Those who didn't help faced death.

Other chilling reasons cited by Der Speigel include a lingering anti-Semitism, a willingness to help Nazis based on the belief that they would be the war's victors and, in a few cases, human perversion. 

The magazine is also careful to point out there were acts of bravery as some non-Germans defied orders and helped Jews.

But generally, the argument goes, most countries are lagging Germany in their efforts to face up to their own role in the Holocaust.