Last week, Germany lost a president. Over the weekend, the country almost lost its government as well. The choice to nominate Joachim Gauck as the country's next head of state exposed significant differences within Chancellor Merkel's governing coalition and left behind deep scars in Berlin.

The euro crisis has not been kind to the governments of Europe. In Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and elsewhere, prime ministers have been forced to leave office as budget deficits and sovereign debt have spiked across the euro zone. Even French President Nicolas Sarkozy is on the ropes in his re-election campaign, partially the result of his country's having lost its triple-A credit rating.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government almost
collapsed over the weekend. Photo: dapd.

In Germany, however, the country in which the ongoing European debt disaster has left the fewest scars, the crisis has had a different effect. With her government facing collapse due to acrimonious disagreement over who should replace the disgraced Christian Wulff as German president, Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday did something she rarely does. She retreated.

And she did so, according to media reports, because of the need for stability in Berlin in the face of Europe's debt problems. There are, a source close to the Chancellery told the Suddeutsche Zeitung, "more important things than choosing a candidate for the presidency."

Merkel's about-face came after her junior coalition partner, the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), committed themselves over the weekend to support the presidential candidacy of Joachim Gauck, 72, a civil rights activist in former East Germany who already had the support of Germany's center-left opposition. While Gauck has broad backing among the German populace, Merkel's conservatives had torpedoed his candidacy once before -- during the election of Wulff in 2010. Accepting Gauck this time around was an extremely difficult political pill to swallow.