For all its economic success, Germany has a growing problem with inequality and poverty, and yet Chancellor Angela Merkel seems to be deflecting the blame so far as the battlelines are drawn for elections in September.
Renowned for its highly-skilled workforce, Germany has in fact a greater proportion of working poor – people who have a job but are struggling with poverty – than Britain, France and even some less wealthy EU states such as Hungary or Cyprus.
Sensing an opportunity to beat the conservative chancellor on September 24, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) are trying to mobilise disgruntled Germans. 
Along with the working poor, the number of pensioners seeking welfare has almost doubled over the past decade, and the SPD are seizing on this to counter the conservatives’ insistence that Germans have never had it so good.
And yet Merkel’s message that economic growth is steady, unemployment is at a record low and falling, and state finances are sound appears to be resonating more with voters many of whom vent their frustration not at the chancellor, who has led Germany for more than 11 years, but at the SPD which enacted labour market and welfare reforms in the mid-2000s, badly hurting its own traditional working class supporters.
Despite its image as a nation of well-paid workers making world class goods like Mercedes cars or Siemens kitchen equipment, Germany does not show up well in international comparisons.
The proportion of employed Germans threatened by poverty, which means their disposable income is less than 60% of the median national wage, was slightly above the European Union average in 2015, according to the EU statistics agency Eurostat.
The figure was 9.7% of the workforce compared with only 8.2% for Britain, which since the 1980s has embraced free-market reforms more vigorously than Germany.
The rate was 7.5% in France, 9.3 in Hungary and 9.1 in Cyprus.
After naming Martin Schulz as its leader in January, the SPD surged in opinion polls to catch up with Merkel’s conservatives, propelled by promises to make German society more equal.
However, while the election is set to be tightly contested, the conservatives have reopened a lead in recent polls with about 35% support, around five points ahead of the SPD, now the junior partner in Merkel’s coalition.
Schulz, a former European Parliament president, is promising to undo some of the “Agenda 2010” reforms enacted by his own party under then chancellor Gerhard Schroeder over a decade ago.
These helped to end a long period of stagnation and high unemployment by making the economy more competitive, turning Germany from the “sick man of Europe” into a powerhouse.
But Agenda 2010 also increased the number of low-paid and part-time workers who now face a higher risk of falling into poverty during their active years or after retirement.
The SPD paid a heavy political price, losing a significant section of its working class support base and three successive elections to the conservatives starting in 2005.
So it is Merkel who reaped the political benefit of the reforms, leaving the SPD to regain the trust now of alienated Germans.
Despite the discontent, Germans are not rejecting their long-established parties, unlike in France.
Nevertheless, the conservatives and SPD must contend with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In regional elections last year, both lost support to the AfD which attracted protest voters, many of them blue-collar workers and the unemployed.
Beset by infighting, the AfD’s support has fallen by a third since the start of the year to 10% but it is still expected to enter parliament for the first time, possibly as the third-largest party ahead of the Linke, Greens and revived liberal Free Democrats.
That would raise the number of groups in parliament to six from four at the moment, complicating the task of coalition building for whoever wins in September.