Chancellor Angela Merkel may be Germany’s most popular politician, but if the country emerges relatively unscathed from the world financial meltdown, it will be thanks to Peer Steinbrück, her finance minister.

A passionate chess player – he spends idle moments confronting his Mephisto chess computer and once played, and lost, against world champion Vladimir Kramnik – Mr Steinbrück has had ample opportunity to apply his strategic thinking in recent weeks.