Schroder's wife attacks conservative rival

Angela Merkel

Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's wife has stepped in to Germany's general election campaign with an attack on her husband's childless conservative rival Angela Merkel.

Doris Schroeder-Kopf, who raised her daughter Clara as a single parent before she met her husband in the late 1990s, criticised Merkel's achievements in her role as minister for women.

"During Merkel's years as minister for women, I was having a really tough time as a single parent," Mrs Schroeder-Kopf told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "I just wonder what really concerned her during those years."

In Die Zeit newspaper last week, Schroeder-Kopf said Merkel's childless background meant she could not share the experiences of most women.

"They are busy trying to juggle a family and a career, or deciding whether to spend a few years at home after having a baby. This is not Angela Merkel's world," she said.

Schroeder-Kopf, a former political journalist, tried to correct the impression that she was blaming Merkel for not having children.

"I would never condemn a woman for being without children because this is frequently bound up with personal grief."

- INDEPENDENT