GERMANY unveiled a huge advertising campaign yesterday to boost the nation’s flagging self-esteem.

A black cloud seems to have settled over the country since the gridlocked general election nine days ago. Young Germans talk of emigrating, and middle-aged architects plan to move to the countryside to raise children, breed chickens and escape the sense of decline. The economy, which was supposed to splutter into life next year after a long recession, now looks likely to grow hardly at all.

Though conceived before this month’s election calamity, the €30 million (£20 million) campaign to restore the nation’s damaged pride, an undertaking reminiscent of the I’m Backing Britain project designed to offset Britain’s economic gloom in 1968, comes at the perfect moment. Dubbed Du bist Deutschland (“You are Germany”), the aim is to present Germans with successful role models and encourage them to do something positive for the country.

The television and poster campaign features Beethoven, Einstein, the racing driver Michael Schumacher, the boxer Max Schmeling and the national goalkeeper, Oliver Kahn. “We want to prompt a new can-do feeling in this country with Germany’s biggest- ever public interest campaign,” Bernd Bauer, the organiser, said. Funding comes from 25 blue-chip media companies.

The lead item on the news yesterday was a downbeat story of the European Commission criticising Germany for failing yet again to meet its eurozone obligations. The campaign message, by contrast, was relentlessly cheerful, as though the whole country had been taken over by Butlins Redcoats.

“A butterfly can cause a typhoon,” Sandra Maischberger, Germany’s star anchorwoman, said in one television commercial. “Unlikely, you say? Then why do you cheer on your team in the stadium if your voice is unimportant? Why do you wave your flag when Schumacher whizzes around the racing circuit? Because your flag is one of many, and out of your voice grows a whole chorus — you are one of many. You are Germany!” The campaign is the biggest part of a drive to cheer up Germans. FC Deutschland 06, the group using next year’s World Cup to promote Germany, brought industrialists and the Government together to promote the country as a “land of ideas”. That campaign, which ran for much of the summer, cost €20 million.

Starting on the Day of German Unity, October 3, people will be encouraged to sign on to a website and register as a “Fan of Germany”. They will get a diploma confirming this.

The original focus of this feelgood lobbying was the World Cup next year. Gerhard Schröder, the Chancellor, was particularly keen because it would have coincided with his efforts to be re-elected. But his snap election has spoilt the timing. Germany, urgently in need of antidepressants, has started early on its course of medication.

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