Cyclists pass in front of an election campaign poster of the new Linkspartei's top candidates Oskar Lafontaine (l) and Gregor Gysi in Berlin. Photograph: Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
They are everywhere - along the side of roads, stuck on street lamps, and plastered next to the river Spree.
If the health of a democracy can be judged by the number of posters around at election time, then German democracy is in good shape. But with 12 days to go until Germans go to the polls in the September 18 election, which party has the best poster?
My favourite by a mile is the poster of the Linkspartei, Germany's new left party, featuring the party's two star candidates Oskar Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi. Both men are wearing suits and smiling. Oskar is on the left, Gregor on the right.
But hang on a minute. Look closely and you notice that Gysi is considerably smaller than Oskar - and looks a bit like a Roman slave gazing adoringly at his master.
Some observers have suggested that the poster is emblematic of the relationship between eastern and western Germany, with the larger Oskar (west) patronising his smaller brother Gregor (east). Gregor is the star candidate of Germany's party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor to the East German communist party, while Oskar - well, he used to be the leader of the Social Democrats before he defected.
My award for the worst posters of the campaign goes to the liberal Free Democrat party (FDP). They have kept it simple, using slogans like: 'More FDP means lower taxes'. Ah, if only life were that easy. Meanwhile, one of the posters for the Christian Democrats (CDU) looks as if it is advertising membership for an upmarket health club, with a woman doing backstroke. Others show photos of a heavily made up Angela Merkel with slogans such as: 'More growth, more jobs' or simply 'A new beginning'.
The Social Democrats, meanwhile, have shots of a statesman-like Gerhard Schröder next to a series of rhetorical questions. They include: 'Whoever wants peace has to take a stand' and 'We stand for social justice. What do the others stand for?' But politics can be a cruel business. Cycling past the Siegesäule, Berlin's famous victory pillar, last week I noticed that someone had scrawled the answer to the last question in one word: 'Erfolg' (success).
