Campaign-free zone The town untouched by party politics

“This is the most important election for a generation but it means nothing here,” said Mario Wissel, 51, a case manager at the local jobcentre in Stolberg, “People can’t think about politics when they are trying to rebuild their homes.”

There is no time for party politics in Stolberg, an ancient town of 56,000, after the three devastating floods that hit the town on July 16, cutting electricity and internet supplies.

While posters and campaign materials for Germany’s many political parties abound in the rest of Germany, in the centre of badly damaged Stolberg, there is nothing because of a gentlemen’s agreement not to campaign there.

The old industrial town has sat, nestled at the bottom of a valley, for almost a thousand years. Never has it suffered floods so devastating or so surprising.

Even now, months later, the clean-up operation is not finished.

“We could knock on doors but no one is home,” Mr Wissel, a local councillor, said. “If they are they would be far more likely to ask me what the hell I was thinking rather than tell me who they were voting for.”

CDU candidate Armin Laschet, who hails from nearby Aachen, was caught laughing on camera with aides as he attended an event to mark the floods. But the gaffe made no impact in Stolberg.

“We didn’t even know that had happened. We had no electricity and we had no televisions so we couldn’t see it,” says Freya Sautner, 33, as she stands in what used to be her apartment kitchen on the ground floor of her building in the heart of the old town.