距离德国大选还有七周的时间，为了吸引公众注意，与德国总理默克尔同党的一位女议员候选人兰斯菲尔德竟把默克尔一张身着华美低胸晚装的照片放在自己的宣传照旁边，还打出“我们能给的更多”这样容易令人联想的标语。这样出位的竞选海报遭到了不少非议，兰斯菲尔德本人对此表示不解，她说：“人们老说竞选海报枯燥无味，现在有人做了完全不同风格的海报出来，却又有人不满了。” 据悉，兰斯菲尔德事先并未和默克尔商量过要用默克尔的形象。 她表示，如果总理知道的话一定不会允许的，因为如果她这样做了，很多人都会效仿的。

Christian¹ Union election poster of Chancellor² Angela Merkel (L) and Vera Lengsfeld, both sporting low-cut tops under the slogan, "We have more to offer." With seven weeks to go until the German elections, billboards³ of Merkel sporting a very revealing low-cut dress have pepped up a campaign that has so far struggled to grab public attention." width="399" border="0" src="/upimg/090816/4_003906_1.jpg" />
A German Christian Union election poster of Chancellor Angela Merkel (L) and Vera Lengsfeld, both sporting low-cut tops under the slogan, "We have more to offer." With seven weeks to go until the German elections, billboards of Merkel sporting a very revealing low-cut dress have pepped up a campaign that has so far struggled to grab public attention.

With seven weeks to go until German elections, billboards of Chancellor Angela Merkel sporting a very revealinglow-cut dress have pepped up a campaign that has so far struggled to grab public attention.

The election placards have been put up by Vera Lengsfeld, from Merkel's conservative CDU party, who is running in a long-shot race in a left-wing district of Berlin for a parliamentary seat in the September 27 poll.

They show photographs of each woman in an evening dress showing plenty of cleavage with the slogan: "We have more to offer" emblazoned over the chancellor's breasts.

Lengsfeld, a former East German dissident, said she had not cleared the picture beforehand with Merkel, 55, telling rolling news channel N24: "The chancellor could never have allowed me to do this, otherwise everyone would have wanted to do it."

The 57-year-old candidate has hung 750 posters in her district and local media have reported a few stolen as souvenirs.

Lengsfeld said over 17,000 people had visited her election blog since she shot into the public eye.

"If only a tenth of them also look at the content of my policies, I will have reached many more people than I could have done with classicstreet canvassing⁴."

She will have her work cut out, however, to transform the limelight into success at the ballot⁵ box against a popular Green party veteran.

Meanwhile the women's arm of the CDU chided Lengsfeld for an outdated⁶ "sex sells" campaign: "We don't need to do things like this anymore," its head, Maria Boehmer, told a news conference.

A CDU spokesman was tight-lipped, saying only that the party's central office was "not notified".

On Lengsfeld's blog, opinion was sharply divided but the campaign had certainly aroused debate, with over 300 comments.

"Witty⁷, cheeky and funny," said "Alex."

But "Lena" said the placards were "embarrassing and shameful⁸."

"How deeply sad that a woman has to attract attention with her breasts because she is incapable⁹ of clever words and thoughts," she said.

Daniel Baltar asked: "Have you gone completely mad?"

Lengsfeld herself said she did not understand the fuss.

"I find it amazing how little humour some people have shown over this placard. People always complain election posters are boring and then as soon as someone does something different, people get annoyed."

The famous photo of Merkel's cleavage, taken at the opening of the Oslo Opera House in April 2008, prompted headlines such as "Merkel's Weapons of Mass Destruction" from British tabloid¹⁰ the Daily Mail and "Deutschland boober alles" from media gossip website Gawker.

It was not the first time images of Merkel -- named by Forbes magazine as the most powerful woman on the planet three years in a row -- made waves.

In 2006, another British tabloid, the Sun, snapped her changing into a bathing suit while on holiday in Italy under the headline "Big in the Bum-destag", a reference to the Bundestag, Germany's lower house of parliament.

This April, the unusual sight of a giant mocked-up photo of Merkel in a matching purple bra and knicker set greeted punters on Berlin's famous Ku'damm shopping street as part of an underwear advertising¹¹ campaign.

Vocabulary:

low-cut dress: 低胸礼服

street canvassing: 扫街拜票