As Dr Helmut Kohl's right-hand man in government, Dr Wolfgang Schauble's fortunes were always inextricably linked to those of his political master. So when the veteran ex-chancellor confessed last month to accepting illegal party donations during his 16-year term, Dr Schauble, now his successor as chairman of the opposition Christian Democrats, was seen being hit by the fallout.
But as party rivals circled to pounce, Dr Schauble put his leadership to a confidence vote yesterday and won - simply because there is still no viable alternative to the 57-year-old former tax administrator at the helm of the conservative party.
"The presidium said that if I resigned, then the entire presidium would resign too," he told reporters after a nail-biting crisis meeting of the party's core leadership council.
Asked about the increasingly naked power struggle among a group of senior CDU politicians to replace him, he replied bluntly: "What there was has been decided."
Since assuming Dr Kohl's party leadership mantle after the CDU's general election defeat in 1998, Dr Schauble has looked uncomfortable both in opposition and leading his own party.
His belated confession earlier this month that he, like Dr Kohl, accepted undeclared campaign donations unleashed calls from the media, from rival parties and, more discreetly, from within his own party for his resignation.
But as likely contenders were cited - from the CDU's progressive general secretary, Ms Angela Merkel, to the Saxony state premier and party elder, Mr Kurt Biedenkopf - it became equally clear that none enjoyed broad support in the party.
"He is on the ropes," said a political commentator, Peter Hahne on ZDF television. "But there is no alternative to Wolfgang Schauble."
Confined to a wheelchair for the past decade by a would-be assassin's bullet, Dr Schauble was the most important figure in the Kohl government aside from the chancellor. As West German interior minister during the tumultuous events after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, it was Dr Schauble who sealed the treaty with East Germany's last communist government that paved the way for unification in 1990.
The same year, he was paralysed from the waist down after being shot by a deranged gunman at a campaign rally.
Dr Kohl was in tears after visiting his ally in hospital, but within two weeks Dr Schauble had staged a comeback and was in cabinet again.
If anything, his power and influence steadily grew as Dr Kohl soon after named him the CDU's parliamentary whip, a key post in German coalition politics which Dr Schauble relished with his negotiating skills and eye for policy detail. - (Reuters) oder's landslide election victory over the CDU in 1998, Mr Schauble was handed the reins of the CDU, by then a defeated and disoriented party.