THE younger brother of Gerhard Schröder is set to make a laughing stock out of the German Chancellor by publishing embarrassing stories about their early life together — on paper handkerchiefs to be sold across the country.

Lothar Vosseler, a 57-year-old unemployed heating engineer, claims that he bears no grudge against his half-brother. But his strange initiative — cooked up with Ernest Buck, a Berlin businessman — is sure to stir up a family feud.

The so-called “handkerchief newspaper” has been devised to dodge the privacy laws and potential injunctions. Herr Schröder has already gone to court to muzzle magazines who claim that he dyes his hair and to block the publication of pictures of his family.

The new scheme, however, will be unstoppable in the courts and 500,000 packets of tissue handkerchiefs will be distributed among 50,000 kiosks and newspaper stands. They will be sold from November 5 for just under €1 (69p); each packet will contain 20 tissues with caricatures of and stories about Herr Schröder. The launch name is “Sniff” and is plainly targeted at the estimated 20 per cent of Germans who are currently suffering from colds. At one blow, so to speak, they will be able to clear their air passages and express their contempt for the Government.

“Previously unknown human weaknesses and character flaws of the Chancellor will be revealed by Lothar Vosseler,” said Herr Buck, who describes their venture as a new form of disseminating satire.

“The dramatically different biographies of these unequal brothers will, believe me, throw up splendid anecdotes.”

The move forms part of a marketing campaign to promote Herr Vosseler’s memoirs (co-written with Herr Buck), entitled The Chancellor, Unfortunately My Brother, And I. The book is due to be launched in December as a hardback and in January as a compact disc.

The stories about the Chancellor leaked so far are tame but are probably still enough to annoy the easily irritated German leader. Herr Vosseler claims that Herr Schröder cheated him out of his first suit.

“He said it was too big for me and made me look ugly, went on and on about it, until I agreed — and then he used it himself,” Herr Vosseler said.

The Chancellor, his half-brother claims, has a vengeful side. “Gerhard’s first platonic love was the daughter of a decorator in Lippe where we grew up,” recalls the bearded, bespectacled Herr Vosseler. “At the time my brother was just an apprentice in an ironmonger’s shop and the girl’s father didn’t approve, so he banned all contact. Gerhard did not want to accept that so together at night we whitewashed the man’s windows.”

Herr Vosseler promises more for tissue-purchasers: the time, for example, when the future Chancellor crashed a car into a fence — hardly stories to dent the Chancellor’s international credentials, but sure to get under his skin.

Several members of the Schröder family are or have been unemployed. His sister, Gudrun, sent off 47 unsuccessful job applications before landing a post as a supervisor in a slot machine hall. Herr Vosseler has tried many jobs — sewerage inspector, newspaper columnist, porter, underwater tour guide — but none has lasted long. His latest job is a promoter of fruit loaves, a job arranged by Herr Buck, who is busily trying to relaunch Lothar Vosseler as an author.

The Chancellor’s friends are worried not so much at the prospect of skeletons tumbling out of cupboards but rather at the possible manipulation of his half-brother as Germany moves towards a general election.

Herr Vosseler claims that he has suffered because of his family status and therefore he has a right to grasp at any chance of celebrity — an appearance on the reality show Big Brother, an expenses-paid invitation to Turkey as a backhanded way of repaying the Chancellor for supporting Ankara’s attempt to enter the EU.

“My reluctant position of Chancellor-brother has become a personal yoke for me. My bank account is empty and now I want to draw on my biographical capital,” Herr Vosseler said. “You could call it ‘Chancellor-brother damages’, a kind of compensation fund. I am sure Gerhard won’t begrudge me that.”

Political observers in Berlin yesterday did not share Herr Vosseler’s sunny confidence.

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