The German Finance Minister, Mr Oskar Lafontaine, looked ashen on Wednesday morning as he left the Cabinet room in Bonn after a blistering dressing-down from the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder.
Eyes flashing with anger, Mr Schroder thumped the table as he accused his Finance Minister of alienating business and endangering the Alliance for Jobs with policies driven by ideology rather than pragmatism.
"I want to keep it together but I can't if we demand more from business than it can bear. I won't have anything to do with a policy against business," the Chancellor said.
By yesterday morning, the mass-circulation Bild newspaper was reporting that the Chancellor was threatening to resign unless Mr Lafontaine changed course.
In the event, it was Mr Lafontaine who stunned Bonn's political scene last night by resigning both as Finance Minister and chairman of the Social Democrats (SPD).
It marked a dramatic end to a power struggle between the Chancellor and the Finance Minister that has paralysed Germany's centre-left government since it entered office five months ago.
And it brought to an ignominious close the political career of a man who revived the fortunes of his party only to be outmanoeuvred by the Chancellor whose election victory he made possible.
There was little in Mr Lafontaine's sparse resignation statement to indicate why he had chosen to leave the political stage and he left Bonn for his home in Saarbrucken before the announcement was made.
His double burden as Finance Minister and party chairman was beginning to tell in recent weeks, not least because he could not resist interfering in the work of other ministers.
"He had a 100 per cent job as Finance Minister, 25 per cent of the Economic Minister's role and tried to run the government's foreign policy as well as controlling his party," one minister said last night.
Mr Lafontaine's burden was all the more difficult to bear on account of his failure to appoint competent advisers and his refusal to listen to the Finance Ministry civil servants he suspected of opposing his policies.
Within days of entering office, the Finance Minister was at odds with German business leaders, the Bundesbank, the European Central Bank (ECB) and many of his European counterparts.
A proposal to harmonise tax rates throughout the EU won him the honour of being dubbed "the most dangerous man in Europe" by the Sun.
The same paper asked last week if the current German government was the worst since Hitler.
Surrounded by like-minded economists such as his chief adviser, Dr Heiner Flassbeck, Mr Lafontaine brushed off criticism of his plan to revive the economy by giving consumers more money to spend.
Tax cuts for working families and generous wage settlements, combined with lower interest rates, would encourage consumers to buy more goods, thus boosting the economy and creating more jobs.
The ECB, under its austere Dutch president, Mr Wim Duisenberg, refused to cut rates - partly because of Mr Lafontaine's endless demands for a cut. And with each utterance from the German Finance Minister, the euro fell against the dollar on the financial markets, making a rate cut even less likely.
Big business knew the new German government would be less well disposed towards the interests of capital than its conservative predecessor.
But most business leaders were shocked by Mr Lafontaine's hostility and sheer rudeness during their meetings.
Companies such as the Allianz insurance firm threatened to leave Germany because of the Finance Minister's plan to end tax loopholes worth billions to the insurance, energy and construction sectors. As the economy began to shrink, other firms warned that higher taxes and bigger wage bills would inevitably mean lower profits and fewer jobs.
COMPANIES fear that the closing of tax loopholes and the abolition of tax privileges on certain goods and services will have the effect of increasing their overall tax burden dramatically. Some manufacturers argue that abolishing some tax write-offs will make consumers worse off too by pushing up the price of many goods.
According to Mr Lafontaine's plan, the proportion of the cost of a company car that can be set off against tax would be reduced - a change car manufacturers claim will amount to a 7 per cent price increase.
Mr Lafontaine ignored such threats but Mr Schroder, who has long been close to business and sat on the board of Volkswagen, took them very seriously indeed.
Perceiving that his key promise to cut Germany's dole queues was in danger, the Chancellor abandoned his policy of neutrality between his Finance Minister and his friends in business.
He insisted on radical changes to Mr Lafontaine's tax proposals that would rip the redistributive heart from the plan.
The government is strong enough in parliamentary terms to ignore the complaints of business and push its reforms through regardless.
But the 22 top managers who wrote to the Chancellor last week knew they had an important opportunity to influence the government through Mr Schroder's flagship project, the Alliance for Jobs.
Made up of representatives from business, the trade unions and the government, the Alliance for Jobs is a forum aimed at producing practical policy initiatives that will cut Germany's jobless total by at least one million during Mr Schroder's current term in office.
Mr Schroder knows his government will stand or fall on its record on unemployment and he needs the help of business if he is to cut the dole queues.
Mr Lafontaine's departure leaves the Chancellor as the undisputed master of his government and most observers in Bonn were predicting last night that he would also take control of his party by seizing the post of SPD chairman. Mr Schroder's mentor, the former chancellor, Mr Helmut Schmidt, has frequently identified his failure to become party chairman as his gravest political mistake.
THE Chancellor now has only one troublesome minister in his cabinet - the Environment Minister, Mr Jurgen Trittin, who is one of three Green ministers. Mr Schroder has already forced Mr Trittin to scale down plans to end nuclear power in Germany and he warned him this week against introducing new anti-smog laws.
While Mr Lafontaine remained in office, an alternative coalition with the business-friendly Liberal Free Democrats (FDP) remained out of the question.
But the FDP is already co-operating with the government on a plan to reform Germany's antiquated citizenship law and further co-operation is possible.
The fact that such an alternative is available ought to be enough to prevent the Greens from making excessive demands and will allow Mr Schroder to follow a more centrist economic path.
The Greens are in any case more sympathetic to Mr Schroder's preferred recipe of labour market reforms and a leaner state than to Mr Lafontaine's brand of neo-Keynesian economics.
So the Finance Minister's resignation could have the effect of creating more harmony between the coalition partners rather than less.
Mr Hans Eichel, the man tipped to succeed Mr Lafontaine as Finance Minister, has served in government in the state of Hesse with the Green Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer.
And the strengthened position of the Chancellor will at least mean there is only one power centre in the German government.
Mr Lafontaine's departure marks an important ideological shift for the SPD, a party that has long been torn between the ideological left and the pragmatic right. The left-wing dream of social justice and redistribution has been dealt a heavy blow and the complexion of this German government is about to change.
Mr Schroder will lead his party and his country towards what he describes as "the New Centre", a non-ideological uncharted territory where business and unions live happily alongside one another - and the Chancellor remains the undisputed master of the political scene.