Germany’s front-runner Merz: Risk-taker who flirted with far right
Germany’s front-runner Merz: Risk-taker who flirted with far right He is projected to be Germany’s next leader, and his supporters see him as an antidote to Europe’s crisis of trust.
Friedrich Merz, 69, is a recognized face among the conservative party’s old guard.
Politically, he has never come across as inspiring. Nonetheless, he vows to strengthen Germany’s leadership and address many of its challenges within four years.
His dramatic attempt to tighten migration laws with the backing of far-right votes in parliament indicates a guy ready to take a risk by breaching a fundamental taboo. It also represents yet another significant departure from his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party’s more moderate posture under former challenger Angela Merkel.
Although Merz was ultimately unable to modify the legislation, he did shoot a lightning bolt into an election campaign sparked by the fall of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s administration late last year.
He was famously ignored by Merkel before she became chancellor, leaving parliament totally to seek a lucrative succession of business roles and being dismissed as yesterday’s guy.
But there is a sense that this 69-year-old comeback kid is on the verge of landing the job he has wanted for so long.
It is January 23, one month before Germany’s snap federal election, and a crowd has assembled in one of Berlin’s five-star hotels to hear Merz deliver a foreign policy lecture.
The atmosphere in the “ballroom” at the Hotel de Rome isn’t exactly electrifying, but it’s a long cry from 20 years ago, when his political career was ended.
Merz is also a certified pilot who faced controversy in 2022 for going to the northern German island of Sylt with his private jet for the wedding of fellow politician Christian Lindner.
As he reaches the stage
As he reaches the stage at the Hotel de Rome, there is polite applause for the leader of Germany’s conservative CDU opposition, which has routinely led surveys.
Merz, tall and thin in a suit and spectacles, presents a calm, conventional, business-like image as he attempts to show a preparation for leadership.
But it’s been a tortuous trip to get here.
Merz was born in 1955 into a well-known conservative Catholic family in the town of Brilon in west Germany.
Charlotte, the wife of Friedrich Merz, and his father were both local judges.
While still in school, the younger Merz joined the CDU.
He claimed to have been a wilder young man than his somber resume might imply in an interview with the German newspaper Tagesspiegel 25 years ago. Among his follies, he talked about playing the card game Doppelkopf in the rear of the class, hanging out with buddies beside a chip stand, and speeding through the streets on a motorcycle.
According to Der Spiegel magazine, a group of kids at a party he mentioned ended up peeing together in the school aquarium.
Some people doubt that Merz was much of a rabble-rouser when he was a teenager. According to a former classmate, the young Friedrich’s disruptive behavior was more often the result of his need for “the last word.” People who have known him, whether on or off the record, have told me that he likes beer and can be entertaining, but few were able to provide an example.
Who’s who in German elections and why this vote is important
Following graduation, he served in the military before pursuing a legal education and being married to fellow student Charlotte Gass in 1981.
The couple has three kids.
Merz practiced
Merz practiced law for a few years, but he always had his sights set on politics, and in 1989, at the age of 33, he was elected to the European Parliament. Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, who concurrently became an MEP for the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), adds, “We were both quite young and very fresh and let’s say unspoilt.”
She thought the young Merz was courteous, trustworthy, sincere, and serious.
Even funny, a trait she believes is less evident these days: “I assume the amount of bruises over time might have hardened him a bit.”
However, did he appear as a possible chancellor early in his career?
“I probably would have said no, no way. Come on, you have to be joking.
Everyone was aware of his intense ambition, though, and in 1994 Merz quickly moved from EU politics to the Bundestag, Germany’s national parliament.
He advanced through the ranks, hailed as a gifted member of the traditionalist, more right-wing wing of the party.
Klaus-Peter Willsch, a CDU member of the Bundestag who has known him for over 30 years, describes him as “a profound thinker and a splendid speaker.”
Merz made three efforts to lead his party, proving that he is “a fighter,” according to Willsch.
His inability to win over the grassroots might also be interpreted as the reason for his first two setbacks, in 2018 and January 2021.
However, he fell to Angela Merkel in a party power battle back in the early 2000s, when his goals were first sidetracked.
Merz, the brazenly confident lawyer from the west, and Merkel, the quiet quantum chemist from the erstwhile communist east, never really agreed.
In a succinct autobiographical
In a succinct autobiographical article on the CDU website, Merz dismisses this unpleasant experience, stating that he had made the decision to leave parliament by 2009 in order to “make room for reflection.”
After years of introspection, he pursued a career in corporate law and finance, rising to the position of boardroom executive at several multinational corporations and reportedly becoming a millionaire.
He would not return to parliament for over ten years, and since then, he has attempted to undermine Merkel’s more moderate views on CDU conservatism.
A notable instance of political severance occurred at the end of last month when Friedrich Merz used votes from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to pass a non-binding motion on stricter immigration laws.
Despite his insistence that there had been no direct cooperation with the AfD, his action sparked widespread protests and was denounced twice by Merkel herself.
The woman who ruled Germany for 16 years has made these seldom public appearances.
Supporters maintain Merz is actually trying to deceitfully entice people from the far right, while critics claim it was an unforgivable election ploy that would only help the AfD. In the 1990s, he voted against a law that criminalized marital rape, putting him at danger of offending more moderate segments of the public.
He subsequently clarified that he took problem with other parts of the measure and believed that marital rape was already illegal.
He is not particularly well-liked by women and young people, according to polls, but Klaus-Peter Willsch feels that the way he is portrayed in German media is unjust.
I had him several
“I had him several times in my constituency,” he asserts to me. “Afterwards, women come up and say he’s a nice guy.” By telling the Westfalenpost, Charlotte Merz has also defended him, saying, “What some people write about my husband’s image of women is simply not true.”
According to her, they had supported one another throughout their marriage: “We both took care of each other’s jobs and divided the childcare in such a way that it was compatible with our professional obligations.”
The election on Sunday will test his popularity, and conjecture about who they may form a coalition with will become more important than whether they win. One EU ambassador told me that Brussels was “anxiously awaiting his arrival” despite the criticisms.
“It’s time to move on from this German deadlock and get that motor running.”
