BERLIN — Germans normally wait about six weeks after an election for a government to be sworn in. That benchmark quietly came and went a week ago, an indication of the challenge facing a politically weakened Angela Merkel.

Since her party won just 30.2 percent of the vote in the Sept. 24 election, the chancellor has found herself struggling to bridge a yawning gap between prospective coalition partners, rendering a normally painstaking process even more protracted and difficult.

The four parties in the talks — her conservative Christian Democrats; their Bavaria-only sister party, the Christian Social Union; the pro-business Free Democrats and the environmentalist Greens — span the political spectrum.

This week the chancellor set a deadline of next Thursday for the parties to decide whether they can make a government work — and these are just the preliminary talks. Should the parties decide to move to the next step, only then will they start hammering out what could be the longest, most detailed coalition agreement Germany has seen to date.