After the debate between the conservative and Social Democratic candidates that generated few highlights on Sunday, it was the smaller parties' turn to duke it out on German public TV on Monday.

The five participants covered the entire range of German politics: the anti-immigration right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD); the Bavarian conservative party, CSU, the "little sister" of Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU; the free-market- and personal civil-liberties-oriented Free Democrats (FDP); the Greens; and the Left Party, the successor to the Socialist Unity Party in the former communist East Germany.

The potential for disagreement was far greater than between Merkel and her SPD challenger Martin Schulz, so it didn't take long for a few sparks to fly in what was billed as the "battle of five."

Herrmann was caught in the middle between Özdemir (l) and Lindner (r)

The Left Party's Sahra Wagenknecht, for example, immediately attacked the CSU and the FDP for their support of privatization. But all of the party representatives - with the exception of the CSU's Joachim Herrmann - went after Merkel's grand coalition on issues ranging from pensions to digitalization to data privacy to measures to combat radical Islamists in Germany.

The best of enemies?

Although all five participants were aiming to win votes, the stakes were very different. The CSU only stands in Bavaria and has never broken with the CDU, so for them the pressure was off. The AfD, some of whose members have been repeatedly accused of racism and pro-Nazi sympathies, are considered toxic by all other German parties. And the CDU-CSU has ruled out any coalition with the Left, effectively shutting them out of a share of power, unless Schulz and the SPD stage a miracle comeback in the polls.

So eyes were very much on the two potential kingmakers whom the conservatives could well court for a coalition: the FDP and the Greens. An alliance of those two parties with the CDU-CSU would almost certainly command a parliamentary majority after September, but it would also require the Greens and the "Liberals,” as the FDP are known, to overcome their pronounced mutual antipathy.

German political parties you've never heard of The Animal Protection Party In Germany, animal rights activists block off whole highways to make sure toads can cross them safely. So it's no wonder that a party like "Human Environment Animal Welfare" exists. But maybe the larger Green Party has taken the wind out of the animal protectors' sails a bit. In 2013, they could only sway around 140,000 out of Germany's almost 62 million eligible voters.

German political parties you've never heard of The Republicans This one is slightly confusing. Germany has its own Republicans - the REP, as they're known here, have no relation to the party of US President Donald Trump. German Republicans are right-wing nationalists who call themselves "conservative patriots" and say they're fighting to "preserve our culture and identity."

German political parties you've never heard of The Party Yep, this party's simply called The Party. It was founded in 2004 by the editors of German satire magazine "Titanic." The party head is Martin Sonneborn (pictured), who won The Party a seat in the European Parliament in 2014. Maybe this can improve The Party's results in the upcoming Bundestag election. In the previous one, it claimed fewer than 79,000 votes.

German political parties you've never heard of Referendum Party For the party "Starting now... Democracy through referendums - politics for the people," Switzerland is a big role model. Politicians in the German Referendum Party want all political decisions made by the people. They say this would democratize the "rule of the parties" and would lead to policies focused on the voter instead of pharmaceutical or banking lobbyists.

German political parties you've never heard of Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany The MLPD is a small party even though half of Germany was once Communist: While the country was divided from 1949 to 1989, East Germany was ruled by the Socialist Unity Party. Today, the far-left MLPD doesn't play a role in German politics. In the last Bundestag election they got a mere 24,000 votes.

German political parties you've never heard of Christians for Germany "Alliance C - Christians for Germany" is a Christian party that was created in 2015 when the Christian-fundamentalist Party of Bible-abiding Christians and the Party for Labor, Environment and Family merged. The party advocates what they see as biblical values: citizen freedom, the rule of law, marriage, family and the preservation of God's creation.

German political parties you've never heard of The Humanists In a country so often governed by Christian Democrats, perhaps it’s no surprise that a party called The Humanists is only running in one state. Founded in 2014, with fewer than 200 members, its motto is "freedom, fairness, progress." The party’s lengthy program addresses aspects including an end to government funding for churches in Germany.

German political parties you've never heard of V-Partei³ Voters almost across the board can vote for the V-Partei³ (the V-cubed party) - the party for "Veränderung" ("change" in English), Vegetarians and Vegans. Founded in 2016 at the Veggieworld trade fair in Munich, the party has about 1,200 members. By 2030, they’d like to see all butchers go out of business, true to their motto: "We love life."

German political parties you've never heard of Alliance for an Unconditional Basic Income Several countries have launched basic income pilot projects and the new German party Alliance for an Unconditional Basic Income is also asking for just that: a basic income for everyone, no matter whether they work or not. Voters in all 16 federal states can cast their ballot for this alliance - even if it remains up in the air how the party would finance such an income, and how much it would be.

German political parties you've never heard of Bergpartei Despite its name, the Berlin-only Bergpartei (mountain party) has nothing to do with climbing. In an alliance with the Über-Party, it’s finally made the electoral roll at the fourth attempt. Members describe themselves as "artists, former squatters, job hoppers, media guys and other creative people" - and for a lack of funds, these leftists design their own campaign posters.

German political parties you've never heard of DU - The Urban Another Berlin-only party is the spanking new The Urban, a Hip-Hop Party: 253 members and counting, hoping to propagate what links them, the essence of hip-hop music - respect, a sense of community and creativity. The party program has a special focus on anti-racism and anti-discrimination.

German political parties you've never heard of The Pensioners You won't see this group on the ballot in the 2017 Bundestag elections anymore: the German Pensioner Party has retired. In the 2013 elections, it got a mere 25,000 votes and in 2016, party officials disbanded it for good. Author: Carla Bleiker, Dagmar Breitenbach



Whether it was strategy or not, FDP chairman Christian Lindner pointedly agreed with Green co-leader Cem Özdemir that wages for traditional female occupations like nurses and educators needed to be raised. Lindner also used the informal second-person form of address in addressing a direct question to the Green leader.

The two exchanged some testy words over Russia's occupation of Crimea, but for his part, Özdemir seemed more concerned with criticizing the CSU and the right- and left-wing extremes.

"I can't hear the anti-EU excuses any more, either from the Left or the AfD, that every time national policy fails it's Brussels' fault," Özdemir said in his most heated moment.

The small parties are running neck and neck in opinion polls

Left versus right

For the Linke and the AfD, both of which are also hovering around the ten percent mark in opinion polls, the goal is to eat up as much of the vote as possible, making it difficult for the more centrist parties to form a coalition.

Should it come to another edition of the grand coalition, the party among the Left, the Greens, the FDP and the AfD that garnered the most votes would lead the parliamentary opposition. That would be a feather in the cap particularly for the AfD, which has only existed since 2013.

The AfD's Alice Weidel was at pains to claim her party was the only one that criticized the European Union's policy of zero percent prime rate interest. That didn't sit well with the Left.

"I don't know if the AfD took over the criticism of the EU from us, but we were advancing it before there even was such a thing as the AfD,” Wagenknecht said.

Weidel responded by asking Wagenknecht whether her party truly believed in a world without national borders. Wagenknecht then raised the stakes by asking Weidel whether she felt comfortable in a party full of "half-Nazis.”

The asylum seeker issue continues to influence the election - at least among the politicians

Hot-button issue migrants

Amidst criticism that the Merkel-Schulz debate focused too much on migrants, the moderators initially concentrated on social welfare issues. But there was no avoiding the topic of migrants and asylum seekers.

Here differences between the FDP and the Greens emerged, with Lindner saying that rejected asylum seekers needed to be deported more quickly and criticizing the Greens for opposing deportations to Northern Africa.

Not surprisingly Weidel took the hardest line, proposing that German asylum law needed to be rewritten to achieve "negative immigration.”

Özdemir argued that the "wrong people” were being deported, while dangerous individuals like the Berlin Christmas market attacker Anis Amri escaped effective supervision.

Whether any minds were changed as the five representatives challenged and interrupted one another over the course of 75 minutes is an open question. But the "battle of five" did show that there is some possibility for shifting alliances in German politics, but that will depend on on the German electorate, when it chooses the country's next parliament on September 24.