A mocking magazine cover supposedly showing Angela Merkel breast-feeding the twin leaders of Poland has enraged Germany and further curdled the relationship between Warsaw and Berlin.

Rarely, since the fall of communism, has so much tension crackled between the two neighbours. The photo-montage in Wprost magazine, under the headline “Stepmother of Europe”, places the head of the German Chancellor on top of the bare-breasted body of a 21 year old woman.

Evidently, the aim was to highlight Polish dependency on Germany and explain what the magazine sees as a climbdown by the twins, President Lech Kaczynski and the Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

President Kaczynski had gone to the European summit last week determined to change the voting system in a way that would give Poland almost as much weight as Germany. For Poland, said the twins, it was a question of “the square root or death”, referring to their mathematical formula which would enhance Poland’s position.

Now Wprost claims it boiled down to “milk or death” -- the Polish need for a flow of subsidies underwritten by Germany, the paymaster of Europe. Hence the portrait of a breast-feeding chancellor.”

The Poles should put a stop to this tastelessness,” fumed Eduard Lintner, foreign policy spokesman of the Christian Social Union.” Sooner or later this is going to turn the mood of Germany against them.”

The dismay is being expressed across the party spectrum. ”Poland has lost many friends over the past weeks and months,” said Markus Meckel, a Social Democrat who leads the German-Polish parliamentary committee. ”I am stunned.”

Neither the Chancellor nor the Kaczynski twins have commented on the cover-story. Although other Polish media have been critical of both the German tactics and the diplomatic behaviour of the twins, the Wprost story has hit hardest because one of its authors, Mariusz Muszynski is an advisor on Germany to the Polish foreign ministry.

The German tabloid press has for the past three days complained bitterly about Polish ingratitude. The six-inch banner headline in Bild zeitung yesterday read:”Poles mock German chancellor”. Just to rub in their displeasure, the editors printed a picture of two naked British twins(”Rea” and “Tonya”) declaring “at last two really nice twins -- unlike the sourpuss brothers in Warsaw.”

The editor of Wprost, Stanislaw Janecki, seemed a little baffled yesterday by the force of the German reaction. ”We thought of it as a little joke,“ he said, ”after all stepmothers are often more attractive and friendlier than real mothers.” He could not imagine Ms Merkel taking offence. ”We looked for a model that was not too thin but who had a beautiful body,” said Mr Janecki.

Wprost has a reputation for hard-hitting covers. One showed the then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder being straddled by the head of the Expelled Germans association, Erika Steinbach.

Ms Steinbach was shown wearing a tight black leather SS uniform and a swastika. Herr Schroeder let it be known that he was deeply offended. More recently the magazine depicted the ex-chancellor shaking hands with President Vladimir Putin -- but their hands were gas pipes, a reference to the German-Russian energy pipeline that is going to bypass Poland.

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