The elements of Germany's political Ash Wednesday are generally the same -- a Bavarian hall, kegs of beer and mounds of fish sandwiches. With these elements in place, the country's leading politicians can mount the stage and "spout off the crudest simplifications (of Germany's problems) they can," says Werner Patzelt, a political science professor in Dresden who has watched from the sidelines.

Edmund Stoiber, the premier of Bavaria, could not let the opportunity slip by on Wednesday. Stoiber mounted the stage in Passau and lashed out at the man who defeated him in September's national election, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.

Schröder "is Germany's all-time worst chancellor," Stoiber said at one point in his speech to 6,000 people. "Schröder can't get the job done. He has to go," he said at another point.

Foreign policy attacked

Before reaching this conclusion, Stoiber detailed his reasons for wanting to see the Social Democrat out of office five months after his re-election. In foreign policy, Schröder "has split Europe, he has split NATO and he has done not one thing to make Saddam Hussein take the U.N. seriously," he said.

The attack was aimed at Schröder's anti-war course that began to take shape during last summer's election campaign. In stump speeches, Schröder declared that Germany would not help fight any war launched against Iraq. In January, he sharpened this position, saying Germany would not support any U.N. resolution that authorized at war on Iraq. And last month, Schröder went a step farther, joining Belgium and France in vetoing a U.S. request for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to start planning to protect Turkey from any Iraq attacks.

"Schröder acts as though the dangers are really in Washington," Stoiber said.

Greens provide cover

For his part, Schröder told a roomful of rowdy SPD loyalists in the northern city of Schwerte that the opposition was practicing "organized irresponsibility," and offered no solutions to Germany's problems.

He stood firm by his anti-Iraq stance, saying that Germany would fight to convince other European countries and the United States to disarm Iraq using peaceful methods.

It was a stance supported by the social democrats' coalition partner, the Greens.

"His position is producing international alliances for peace, and the babbling of (opposition leader) Angela Merkel is not," said Renate Künast (photo right), Germany's German consumer protection and agricultural minister.

The speeches on Ash Wednesday are part of a tradition that took shape deep in Bavaria in the 19th century. Back then, farmers would congregate on Ash Wednesday in the town Vilsholfen to sell cattle and horses. But there was always something else on the farmers' minds, Bavarian politics. Over the decades, these simple debates evolved into a major media event thanks in part to the rhetoric of the late Bavarian leader Franz Josef Strauss.

Throughout the years, one practice has changed completely. Previously, spies would send back messages by couriers letting their political allies know what was being said and allowing them to toughen their own rhetoric. Today, though, the speakers usually stick to their texts.