After a strong start to trading on Monday, gains on the German stock market quickly crumbled back somewhat. At lunchtime, the leading German index gained around one percent to 12,858.07 points. At times it had already gone back towards 12,932 points, its high from last week. The MDax recently rose by 0.48 percent to 23,027.56 points.

Before Europe's largest software manufacturer SAP will present its quarterly balance sheet on Tuesday, the shares of Atoss Software from the SDax small-cap index came into focus. They rose about 10 percent as the provider of human resources management software became more optimistic about the year as a whole. Atoss also wants to achieve a 30 percent margin by 2025 instead of the previously targeted 25 to 30 percent. Orders for its programs to be used over the network from the cloud continue to give the Group impetus.

On the other hand, the shares of Morphosys were at the bottom of the SDax with minus 8.6 percent. The papers were weighed down by negative analyst comments after the biotech took a more cautious stance on US cancer drug Monjuvi on Friday.

Last place was taken by Patrizia shares, which fell by 9.3 percent. Deutsche Bank analyst Lars Vom-Cleff is pessimistic ahead of the publication of the real estate group's nine-month report and sees "some clouds on the horizon".