GERMAN Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, 58, secured a second four-year mandate for his coalition with the Greens party in Sunday's vote, though his majority in the 603-seat Parliament was reduced to nine from 21. Anyway, Schroeder has won again.

　　Laugh the last

　　The night of Sept.22 must be one of the longest and the toughest in Schroeder's political career. Mr. Edmund Stoiber, conservative challenger, claimed victory soon after the polls closed. "One thing is clear: we have won the election," he told jubilant supporters in Berlin after early official estimates showed an opposition center-right alliance would overtake Mr. Schroeder's coalition government.

　　At this critical moment, Mr. Schroeder had not lost his confidence; instead, he told his supporters at his party headquarters that the prospect appeared good to continue governing for another four years. His words were impressive and influential, "A majority is a majority. If we have it, we will use it. We want to continue -- and it looks like we will be able to." The final result of the election proved that Schroeder's confidence really worked.

　　Brilliant measures

　　During the past months before the election started, the domestic conditions were not favorable to Mr. Schroeder -- the domestic economy was sluggish, the stock prices fell to 40 percent at the beginning of this year, and the jobless rate reached as high as 10 percent. The unemployment rate in the former East German areas was especially serious.

　　As a result, the voters became unsatisfied with Mr. Schroeder's government. Opinion polls published before the election showed that Mr. Schroeder was still 7 to 10 percentage points behind his rival.

　　However, Schroeder's excellent performance in the face of the floods, which hit the eastern part of Germany in the middle of August of this year, has shifted the support of the voters.

　　He stood on the sand bags and promised his voters in the former East German areas, "We will not let your life become worse." He immediately arranged 10 million euros to help the impoverished citizens there. This was regarded as the turning point for Mr. Schroeder campaign to the good side.

　　Challenge the United States

　　To cling to power for the second term of four years, Mr. Schroeder even played the tactics beautifully with its long-standing ally -- the United States.

　　Because of the historical reason, there is a strong anti-war emotion in Germany. The left group from the Social Democrats and the supporters of the Green Party have always adopted the attitude of opposition against wars, and the majority of the German people are becoming unsatisfied with the unilateralism of the Bush administration in its foreign policy.

　　Under such circumstances, Mr. Schroeder cleverly took the stand against the Bush administration's threatening war to oust Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

　　Schroeder has insisted he would not commit troops for a war even if the U.N. backs military action. The rhetoric reached a damaging peak in the final days of his campaign when Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin was reported to have indirectly compared U.S. President Bush to Hitler for threatening war to distract from domestic problems. She was forced to quit her position Sept. 23.

　　However, Mr. Schroeder's stand has exactly fallen on fertile ground among the more than 61 million voters, who have in the last moment granted him the chance to secure the second term to govern.

　　Poor childhood

　　Schroeder was not born with a strong personality, but became strong during his hard and unforgettable early days.

　　He was born on April 7, 1944 to an impoverished Protestant family in Mossenburg, a town in the northern German state of Lower Saxony. He never knew his father, who died in a battle in World War II. He and his four siblings were raised by his mother, who worked as a cleaning woman.

　　Schroeder left school at age 14 to take an apprentice sales position. He later took classes at Goettingen University, where he earned a law degree in 1976.

　　Road of politics

　　Early in his career as a lawyer, Schroeder became active in the Social Democratic Party (SPD). He was named to head the SPD's youth wing, the Young Socialists, in 1978. He was first elected to the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament, in 1980. Schroeder was initially associated with the far-left wing of the SPD, but he gradually shifted toward the political center during his career.

　　He was thought to be more sympathetic to the business community in the 1990s, when he was a member of the supervisory board of Volkswagen AG.

　　In 1986, Schroeder was elected head of the political opposition in Lower Saxony, and was named to the SPD's national executive body. He became Lower Saxony's premier in 1990, when the SPD formed a ruling coalition in that state with the environmentalist Greens.

　　The SPD in April nominated Schroeder as its candidate for chancellor. The party won a national election held September 27, 1998, effectively ending the 16-year chancellorship of conservative Helmut Kohl.

　　Chaotic start

　　But his start was chaotic: While power struggles rocked his cabinet, pictures showed Schroeder, a man of working-class origin who likes the good life: puffing on Cuban cigars and posing in designer clothes.

　　The flap faded, but image and style remained so critical to Schroeder that he went to court during this year's election campaign to quash allegations that he dyed his mane of dark hair.

　　At work in the imposing new Berlin chancellery and on the international stage, Schroeder has pushed Germany to become more self-confident and take on greater responsibilities.

　　The first postwar chancellor to govern from reunited Berlin and the first with no personal memory of World War II, Schroeder broke new ground just months after coming to power when he sent the German military into combat in the 1999 war over Kosovo.

　　He put his job on the line last year by calling a confidence vote to bring doubters in his coalition behind the dispatch of German troops to Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. Schroeder won and the soldiers went.

　　On the home front, he has pushed through landmark projects of the left -- new citizenship rules that allow quicker naturalization of foreigners, a phase-out of nuclear power and a gay marriage law.

　　But Schroeder, reputed as a industry-friendly Social Democrat, has disappointed business leaders who say he has shied away from market reforms Germany needs to spark growth and competitiveness.

　　A major tax cut took effect last year, but Schroeder also repeatedly hewed to the left on economic policy to satisfy a crucial constituency -- Germany's powerful labor unions.

　　Schroeder's once-turbulent private life has settled down since he took office. His fourth wife Doris Schroeder-Koepf, a journalist 20 years his junior, has been elegant at his side but in keeping with German tradition has generally stayed out of politics.

　　Critical task ahead

　　Though Schroeder has won again, in his road ahead there are some hard tasks remaining to be tackled.

　　First of all, Schroeder will have to repair relations with Washington, which has been damaged by a new German assertiveness that emerged over American determination to oust Saddam Hussein.

　　Besides, stung by Germany's jobless problem, he has to reform the highly regulated labor market.