Chancellor Schroeder's cabinet has suffered a series of blows since his administration took office in 1998.

At one point it was haemorrhaging ministers - seven out of 16 have gone.

Agriculture Minister Karl-Heinz Funke and Health Minister Andrea Fischer made the sixth and seventh, when they resigned in early January in the wake of Germany's BSE crisis.

And it may not be over yet.

Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping is facing calls for his resignation, for allegedly using military planes inappropriately.

As Germany debated sending troops to Macedonia, he used military planes to fly him home from Majorca - where he was on holiday with his lover, Countess Kristina Pilati - and to return there after the vote.

He has also repeatedly visited her in Frankfurt - but insists he has stayed within the rules.

Mr Scharping had already faced strong criticism earlier in the year for his handling of the row over the use of depleted uranium in the Balkans.

He is not the only minister whose future in the cabinet has been placed in doubt.

Earlier this year, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper also suggested Mr Schroeder was having trouble holding on to his Economics Minister, Werner Mueller.

"Rubbish!" Mr Mueller told the tabloid Bild Zeitung, but at the same time he would not commit to staying in the cabinet until Mr Schroeder's term ends in 2002.

The Sueddeutsche wrote that Mr Mueller - the only unaffiliated cabinet member - was wavering between his loyalty to the cabinet and his remaining chances to get a top industry job.

German newspapers have been having a field day.

Mr Schroeder's one-time Dream Team gives them a seemingly endless source of juicy stories.

Within a week of being appointed to the Health Ministry, Ulla Schmidt was threatening legal action over media reporting of her "red-light" past.

Ms Schmidt worked as a waitress in her sister's bar in the 1970s, where police confiscated pornographic videos in a raid.

But Ms Schmidt's story is almost mundane in comparison to the intrigues of Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer.

He has faced calls to quit after admitting a violent radical phase in his youth.

Though his participation in the left-wing scene in the 1970s was never a secret, newspapers have taken pains to unearth witnesses who will testify to Mr Fischer's street battle antics.

His appearance as a witness in the trial of Hans-Joachim Klein over the kidnapping of Opec ministers in Vienna in 1975 has kept the issue in the spotlight.

Other "wobbling" ministers ministers have included Finance Minister Hans Eichel - accused of using the government's VIP airline as a personal taxi service - and Labour Minister Walter Riester - forced to change high-profile plans to reform Germany's pension system.

And all this in a country where Third Way politics - apparently losing its shine in the US and elsewhere - had seemed to be triumphing.

Correspondents say that Mr Schroeder's delicately-balanced coalition, which brought together his left-of-centre Social Democrats with the Greens - could be laid to ruins by any new disasters. His political opponents are already circling.