On election night in 2005 it was hard to imagine then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and his larger-than-life foreign minister Joschka Fischer just disappearing from the public spotlight. Indeed, Schröder put up a good fight as vote counts revealed a much closer result than anybody had expected.

But then, the unthinkable happened. Both Schröder and Fischer largely vanished from public life. The former chancellor headed over to help out with the Gazprom pipeline through the Baltic Sea, and his sidekick Fischer jetted over the Atlantic to take a position at Princeton University. With Germany busy celebrating the leadership of Chancellor Angela Merkel, it was as if the two had never existed.

Suddenly, though, the silence is over. Both Schröder and Fischer are back with a vengeance this week. And neither one of them is proving shy about opining on the state of German politics.

The former chancellor, known in his time as the "Media Chancellor," has rushed back to the reporters to save what he feels is a major part of his legacy: the reform package known by his party as "Agenda 2010." The parcel of changes has formed the foundation of Social Democratic (SPD) politics in recent years.

Social Democrat head Kurt Beck recently advocated making a few changes to one of the Agenda's primary planks -- the infamous welfare law which limits the amount of help the government provides the jobless. Under Schröder, unemployment benefits were substantially cut. Beck had wondered aloud if maybe Germany should grant the older unemployed a longer time on the dole than the reforms currently allow in an effort to reflect the additional difficulties they face in Germany finding employment.

Beck, of course, is doing what he can to find a couple extra percentage points of support for his party, which continues lagging well behind Merkel's Christian Democrats in the opinion polls. But Don Schröder rapped him very publicly on the wrist. "My advice would be to retain the substance of Agenda 2010," Schröder said. "I am positive that steadfastness will pay off in the end."

It was Joschka Fischer, though, who has so far made the bigger splash this week. Almost exactly one year after Schröder published his memoirs, Fischer's 444-page tome will hit the shelves on Thursday. Fischer also graces the cover of this week's SPIEGEL, advertising the book excerpts inside. In a long interview  accompanying the excerpts, Fischer doesn't shy away from commenting on the state of his Green Party and on Germany's foreign policy. Indeed, Fischer has even helped found the European Council on Foreign Relations to secure himself a say in European Union foreign policy in the future.

"The Europeans have to understand how much influence they could have if only they would act together," Fischer urges.

Just how much influence either of the former political heavyweights will have remains to be seen. Fischer, for his part, is almost convincing in his chosen role of éminence grise-- partly because he has continued espousing a greater role for Germany and Europe in world politics, just as he did during his career.

And Schröder? His headlong rush into private industry continues to cast a shadow over his reputation. He has been called a "political prostitute" for the quick switch to the Gazprom pipeline -- a project he signed off on just weeks before the end of his political career.