One hundred days after making modern German history by unseating a chancellor at the ballot box, Mr Gerhard Schroder has yet to settle down. While his wife and stepdaughter occupy a small flat 200 miles away in Hanover, the home-alone Chancellor is living frugally in two drab and temporary rooms at the chancellery.
If the Schroder family has yet to settle down, so has the Schroder government. The coalition of Social Democrats and Greens appears rootless and restless, struggling to cope with the realities of office in Europe's powerhouse after 16 long years in opposition.
In the 100 days since Mr Schroder was sworn in on October 27th, he has managed to upset key west European allies over nuclear energy and the Brussels budget, alarm neighbours to the east with his lukewarm attitude towards EU expansion, and infuriate Washington over nuclear arms strategy.
At home, engineering workers are staging warning strikes, heralding a wave of strife over pay claims.
The central instrument of the Schroder chancellorship is the Jobs Pact, a round table at which government, business executives and union leaders are supposed to hammer out a new deal that puts Germans back to work. But the round-table group has met only once so far, in December, with meagre results.
The German Chancellor has had a less-than-happy honeymoon. Only a few weeks after he took office, Der Spiegel magazine's front page asked, "Where is Schroder?" This week the liberal weekly Die Zeit's front-page headline declaimed: "100 weak days."
Friends and enemies alike berate the government for failing to capitalise on the expectancy that accompanied the Social Democrats' election triumph.
On the international stage, Mr Schroder has had to perform two major U-turns on nuclear weapons and nuclear energy. His Green Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, declared that NATO had to abandon the option of first use of nuclear weapons. When the Americans balked, the Germans backed down.
Then the Green Environment Minister, Mr Jurgen Trittin, summarily told the French and British that contracts to reprocess nuclear waste were being cancelled. When the British, the French and the nuclear lobby protested, Mr Schroder overruled his cabinet colleague and climbed down last week.
It is Mr Schroder's preferred tactic not to lead from the front, but to act as a manager, cajoling, reconciling and seeking compromises.
It is not yet clear whether this is a strength or a weakness: the verdict depends on the results.
Publicly, the tactic appears to be paying off. If opinion-formers and the political class are generally disappointed, the opinion polls show buoyant support for the Chancellor, with 38 per cent last week declaring themselves satisfied with the new government, against 36 per cent who are unhappy.
Another poll yesterday put Mr Schroder's SPD at 42 per cent, one point up on its September election tally.
While 79 per cent found the Chancellor "likeable", 63 per cent rated him "credible", and 60 per cent said he was "reliable".