Oskar Lafontaine, the former finance minister who was the scourge of Germany's rich, looks set to become his country's loneliest millionaire following the publication next week of his memoir, The Heart Beats on the Left. As publishing analysts predicted that the book would net its author more than DM1 million, leading Social Democrats queued up to condemn it as a contemptible betrayal of the party Mr Lafontaine once led.
"He is an egomaniac, an egocentric for whom nothing exists except his own ego," declared the veteran Social Democrat, Mr Erhard Eppler.
In extracts from the book published in two newspapers this week, Mr Lafontaine accuses Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's government of betraying the trust of voters by adopting harsh, neo-liberal economic policies. Describing Mr Schroder as lacking fairness and truthfulness, Mr Lafontaine suggests indirectly that he is unfit to be chancellor.
"We won the election with the promise of a different kind of politics, to create more social justice in our country," he writes.
Mr Lafontaine resigned last March as finance minister, leader of the Social Democrats and from the Bundestag following a dressing-down by the chancellor in front of the entire cabinet. His resignation was followed by a change of course on the part of the government, as it adopted a more orthodox, business-friendly economic policy.
In the foreword to his book, Mr Lafontaine claims that he is motivated less by an urge to avenge himself on the chancellor than by anger at the government's abandonment of its left-wing agenda.
"I could look away from a lack of fairness and truthfulness towards myself, but I cannot remain silent when the voters' trust is abused by a change of political direction. That is why my book is directed against the radical change of course towards neo-liberalism on the part of the red-green coalition and against the ditching of election promises," he writes.
Mr Lafontaine claims that, weeks before he resigned, he had made up his mind to step down as soon as Mr Johannes Rau became the second Social Democrat to be elected German president. He makes no bones about the fact that he blames Mr Schroder for driving him out of the cabinet.
"The measure of what I could reconcile with my self-respect had long before been exceeded. Agreements were not kept, the government's work was not co-ordinated, the teamwork needed for the successful operation of government was not there."
The chancellor has declined to respond to Mr Lafontaine's criticism but he took a swipe at his former colleague during a television interview.
"I would have preferred it if he had said what he has said to me personally, but I don't think I would be doing the 800,000 members of my party any favours if I were to get into a debate about it now," he said.
Many Social Democrats share the former finance minister's unhappiness with the government's economic policies and would like to see a return to Mr Lafontaine's strategy of redistributing wealth to boost growth. However even his political soul mates are outraged by their former leader's attack on the government at a time when the Social Democrats are smarting from a series of electoral disasters.
"I was a big fan of Oskar but I am very disappointed now. It's a really mean way of going on - to resign and then to say what ought to be done better," said Ms Ute Vogt, the Social Democrat leader in the southern state of Baden-Wurttemburg.
In one of the more diverting revelations in the book, Mr Lafontaine writes of an offer by the former chancellor, Dr Helmut Kohl, to buy him a young lion or tiger to rear in his retirement. As his old friends desert him one by one, the isolated Mr Lafontaine may regret that he did not take up the offer of a little extra company.
