By Stephen Brown
BERLIN (Reuters) - Angela Merkel's coalition tried to reassure Germany on Monday it still has the strength to rule despite the sixth resignation of a state leader in a year giving the impression that top conservatives are falling like dominoes.
Leaders of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) attending a party summit played down the importance of the resignation on Sunday of Hamburg's popular mayor Ole von Beust, the sixth CDU state leader to depart since September last year.
"It's a process of change that any party bearing the responsibility of government for a long time must go through -- and nobody in Germany has borne the responsibility of government longer than the Union," said Hesse premier Roland Koch, a party heavyweight who has himself resigned with effect from August 31.
But with Merkel's approval rating at a record low 35 percent in recent polls and her Free Democrat (FDP) partners below the 5 percent threshold for entering parliament, the coalition struggled to do more than put a brave face on a crisis.
"It only makes you weaker if you don't bring in new talent," said Horst Seehofer, leader of the Bavarian sister party to the CDU which together form the "Union" that last year built a new coalition with Guido Westerwelle's Free Democrats.
"The CDU has a lot of good young politicians. So I am not worried: the Union has still got clout," he told Bild newspaper.
Merkel's leadership has come into question over her government's failure to make tangible headway on badly needed financial reforms as the budget deficit rose to record levels. Feuding between coalition partners has made matters worse.
The 56-year-old chancellor has failed to capitalise on her country's strong economic recovery in the second quarter of this year, with exports boosted by the weak euro.
As well as Hamburg, Merkel has lost conservative leaders in Thuringia, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Lower Saxony, Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia, where the CDU's failure to keep power in May's election cost Merkel her majority in parliament's upper house.
North Rhine-Westphalia is now in the hands of Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens in a minority government that opposition leaders said could rule at federal level after the next national election due in 2013.
MERKEL "HOME ALONE?"
That threat could increase if the next conservative mayor of Hamburg, the northern port that is one of Germany's 16 federal states, fails to replicate the unprecedented CDU-Greens alliance that von Beust, a moderate with broad appeal, set up in 2008.
"The coalition would never have happened without him," said Hamburg Greens leader Katharina Fegebank. Her colleagues hinted that its continuation was certainly "no foregone conclusion."
"In forming a Black-Green coalition, Ole von Beust brought the CDU into new territory," Merkel told a news conference on Monday, black being the party colours of the CDU.
"There is a good chance that his successor will be able to lead this coalition further," said the chancellor.
"Coalitions are built first and foremost on content and issues and only secondly on personalities. So I assume the 'Black-Green' alliance in Hamburg's senate will go on," said David McAllister, premier of Lower Saxony since Merkel selected his predecessor, Christian Wulff, as the new German president.
Wulff succeeded Horst Koehler, whose surprise resignation in May over a gaffe in a speech was yet another blow to Merkel on top of all the state premiers' departures, which one paper said had given rise to jokes inside the CDU about "domino day."
"The mass exodus from office of CDU state premiers has strengthened the SPD like manna falling from heaven," added the left-leaning Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily in Munich.
Von Beust's administration in Hamburg also lost a referendum on school reforms on Sunday, an added blow SPD general secretary Andrea Nahles said made a new state election "inevitable."
This could be avoided if the CDU and Greens stuck together and vote for a new mayor in the state assembly in August, But Nahles said that the SPD and Greens had "lots in common" and would together have enough support to oust the CDU in Hamburg.
Nahles told reporters that "CDU leaders have been lining up at the cloakroom to hand back their responsibilities, (which) gives an ever stronger impression that Merkel is home alone."
(Additional reporting by Holger Hansen; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
