March 2 (Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel will probably give financial aid to General Motors Corp.’s Adam Opel unit whether she wants to or not because the political fallout from not acting in an election year is too great, analysts said.

Merkel, whose government received Opel’s restructuring plans today, is a “pragmatic politician and knows that if she does nothing it will harm her,” Oskar Niedermayer, a professor of politics at Berlin’s Free University, said in an interview. “A majority of people expect that the state will try to hold onto the jobs.”

Merkel, facing a national election on Sept. 27, has said her No. 1 priority is to save jobs as Germany’s export-driven economy suffers the worst recession since World War II. Adam Opel GmbH, which has been making cars in Germany since 1899, employs 26,000 staff in Germany, Europe’s biggest economy.

That means the chancellor won’t abandon workers at Opel’s four German assembly plants, said Manfred Guellner, head of polling company Forsa.

“The government can’t afford to let Opel go bankrupt,” Guellner said in an interview. “Against the background of the looming election the government is feeling encouraged to help, whether that makes economic sense or not,” he said. “The pendulum is swinging toward a bigger role for government.”

Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its Social Democratic Party coalition partner set up a 480 billion-euro ($604 billion) bank-rescue fund in October and is spending more than 80 billion euros on stimulus measures. The Cabinet last month agreed on legislation enabling it to seize Munich-based property lender Hypo Real Estate Holding AG.

‘Breaking a Taboo’

Given the steps taken so far, the chancellor won’t baulk at “breaking a taboo” by allowing the government to take a stake in Opel, according to Niedermayer.

Carl-Peter Forster, GM’s top executive in Europe, said Feb. 27 that the biggest U.S. carmaker may give up as much as 50 percent of Opel as it seeks 3.3 billion euros in state aid.

“We have the feeling that our concept is being understood and that our business plan is being recognized as sound,” Forster told reporters at the Geneva Motor Show today after talks in Berlin with Economy Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg.

“The German government’s key priority now is to analyze this concept,” Merkel said at a press conference yesterday following a summit of European Union leaders in Brussels.

Merkel and Cabinet members including Guttenberg have said the government will only help companies that were sound before the financial crisis struck and have a viable business model, and provided aid doesn’t distort competition.

Geithner Meeting

Guttenberg said in Berlin that he will travel to the U.S. for talks with GM executives in two weeks “to discuss existing questions and get an impression of where the parent company wants to go.” Guttenberg will also meet with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to discuss GM’s situation, Ulrich Wilhelm, Merkel’s chief spokesman, said at a regular government press briefing.

Political considerations also come into play for Merkel, as support for her Christian Democrats slumps below the level that forced her into a grand coalition with the Social Democrats after the last election in 2005, Guellner said.

A majority of Germans, 57 percent, support stronger state intervention in the economy to stem the crisis, according to an Allensbach poll for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper published Feb. 25. Just 19 percent rejected state involvement in the economy, Europe’s biggest.

Guido Westerwelle, chairman of the opposition Free Democratic Party, Merkel’s preferred coalition partner after the election, is a lone voice cautioning against the “illusion” that the government can rescue every company in trouble.

‘Car Dinosaur’

Germany mustn’t solve the problems of an “American car dinosaur” with tax money, Westerwelle told today’s Bild newspaper in an interview.

Lawmakers from both coalition parties representing electoral districts with Opel plants say the carmaker is too intertwined with auto suppliers that also produce parts for other carmakers to allow the company to go bankrupt. They also agree that the state should take a stake in Opel to preserve jobs.

Opel, based in Ruesselsheim, outside Frankfurt, is of “systemic relevance” to the medium-sized industry, Gerald Weiss, the Christian Democrat lawmaker in the Ruesselsheim voting district, said in an interview.

“Opel is too big to fail because it’s not just about the production jobs directly affected,” Gerold Reichenbach, the local Social Democrat lawmaker, said by telephone. “A whole automobile cluster hinges on” the carmaker’s survival.

Friedrich Thelen, former parliamentary editor of the business magazine Wirtschaftswoche and founder of Thelen Consult, a Berlin-based business advisory group, said that “all reasonable people” in the government reject an Opel bailout.

“The trouble is, Merkel has to say ‘yes’ to everything like this right now because of the elections,” he said in a Feb. 25 interview.

To contact the reporters on this story: Rainer Buergin in Berlin at rbuergin1@bloomberg.net; Chris Reiter in Berlin at creiter2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 2, 2009 12:14 EST