That was looking less likely today, after the BSkyB announcement about writing off its Kirch investment.
The German liberals who support Schroeder don't much care for Kirch, but they greatly prefer him to Murdoch.
But BSkyB indicated it would exercise its option to sell the stake back to Kirch later this year.
Ways out: Murdoch may walk away and take a big writeoff or German banks could bail out Kirch.
Access to Formula One racing is said to be a key factor driving Kirch's motivation to buy EM.
Also orchestrated an unlikely truce with archrival Leo Kirch (see) last year to create a digital pay TV station.
And politics is still present, via Bayerische Landesbank, the Kirch group's biggest creditor.
News Corp. boss Murdoch has German media baron Kirch in a choke hold.
The shares then passed to media giant Kirch, which acquired another 25% of the business, leaving Ecclestone with 25%.
And what better time than in the week when Holzmann succumbed and Leo Kirch at last threw in the towel?
Kirch collapsed in 2002, with three banks - Bayerische Landesbank, Lehman Brothers and JPMorgan - taking over its stake in F1.
The remaining parts of Kirch's empire, TaurusHolding and KirchBeteiligungs, account for over half of the group's estimated bank debt (see table).
Third, like the ITV Digital palaver in the UK, Kirch's troubles represent the final reckoning for the economic exuberance of the 1990s.
That is what has driven Mr Kirch towards a cross-border alliance of the sort that the authorities are less likely to block.
Germany's Kirch and Italy's Mediaset agreed to form an alliance in European television, which they hope Canal Plus of France, and others, will join.
The immense loans were amassed in the 1990s, as Kirch bought up sporting and film rights to pipe exclusive content to his TV channels.
Still, the overriding impression is of banks and other creditors trying to get their money back rather than propping up Mr Kirch come what may.
Murdoch has found opportunity in the troubles of his fellow media mogul Leo Kirch, whose empire is staggering under the weight of its enormous debt.
Second and in some ways more cheering, Kirch's difficulties - along with a number of other corporate crunches - indicate a sea-change in German business culture.
CLT-Ufa, part-owned by Bertelsmann, and Kirch, the German media mogul, on the grounds that this would lead to too few players in the German pay-television business.
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If the dot.com crash, the collapse of Enron and the string of bankruptcies in the telecoms business did not sober up the business world, Kirch certainly will.
Kirch probably can't pay, so it remains possible that Murdoch--despite what was said today--still will find a way to leverage his Kirch stake into a stronger German presence.
After toying with an investment in the television operations of Leo Kirch, a German media mogul, and with Silvio Berlusconi's Fininvest, Mr Murdoch wooed Canal Plus last year.
Earlier this month, Mr Becker, head of the company's board since 1997, reportedly clashed with Kirch deputy chief executive Dieter Hahn over the terms of the Kirch bid.
And more upheavals in the media industry look probable, now that creditors are piling the pressure on Leo Kirch, a Bavarian media baron whose empire is buckling under huge debts.
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The car companies briefly threatened to set up a rival motor-racing competition, but relented after Kirch promised to keep the races on free television, and not shift them to its pay channels.
Last year saw a record number of bankruptcies: as well as thousands of small firms, household names, such as Mr Kirch's companies, Babcock Borsig, an engineering firm, and Herlitz, a stationery maker, were brought down.
ECONOMIST: There is no quick way out of the quagmire for Germany's banks
Kirch's creditors are growing very impatient, but his rivals fear that if Kirch is forced to sell assets to pay down his debt, that would allow the likes of Murdoch and Malone to crash into their market.
And the next day a Munich court ruled that Deutsche and Rolf Breuer, Mr Ackermann's predecessor, who now chairs the bank's supervisory board, were liable to pay damages to Leo Kirch, a media mogul whose empire crumbled last year.
ECONOMIST: There is no quick way out of the quagmire for Germany's banks
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