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Jessica Parker
BBC Berlin correspondent
BBC
He is the person tipped to be Germany’s subsequent chief: an antidote to Europe’s disaster of confidence, say his supporters.
Friedrich Merz is a well-known face of his conservative celebration’s outdated guard. Politically, he has by no means come throughout as exhilarating.
And but his explosive bid to tighten migration guidelines with the help of far-right votes in parliament reveals a person prepared to gamble by breaking a significant taboo.
It additionally marks yet one more clear break from his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) celebration’s extra centrist stance below his former celebration rival Angela Merkel.
Although Merz finally failed to alter the regulation, he had launched a lightning bolt into an election marketing campaign triggered by the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s authorities late final yr.
Famously sidelined by Merkel earlier than she turned chancellor, he stop parliament solely to pursue a profitable collection of company jobs and was written off as yesterday’s man.
But there’s a sense of inevitability that this 69-year-old comeback child may be on the cusp of clinching the job he has coveted for thus lengthy.
TOBIAS SCHWARZ/AFP
Merz has been married to Charlotte, a decide, for greater than 40 years
It is 23 January, one month till Germany’s snap federal election, and other people have gathered in one among Berlin’s five-star motels to listen to Merz give a international coverage speech.
The buzz across the “ballroom” within the Hotel de Rome is not precisely electrical – however it’s a far cry from 20 years in the past, when his political profession seemed over.
Merz can be a licensed pilot, who drew criticism in 2022 for flying to the north German island of Sylt in his non-public aircraft for the marriage of fellow politician Christian Lindner.
As he takes to the stage within the Hotel de Rome, there’s well mannered applause for the chief of Germany’s conservative CDU opposition, who’re persistently forward within the polls.
Tall, slim, in a go well with and glasses, Merz cuts a peaceful, standard, business-like determine as he tries to venture a readiness for energy.
But it has been a winding journey to get up to now.
Alamy
Merz has a pilot’s licence and was criticised in 2022 for flying a personal aircraft to a political colleague’s marriage ceremony
Merz was born within the west German city of Brilon in 1955 right into a outstanding conservative, Catholic household.
His father served as an area decide, as does Friedrich Merz’s spouse Charlotte to at the present time.
The youthful Merz joined the CDU whereas nonetheless at college.
In an interview 25 years in the past with the German newspaper Tagesspiegel he laid declare to a wilder youth than his strait-laced CV may recommend.
Among his misadventures, he described racing by way of the streets on a bike, hanging out with associates by a chip stand and taking part in the cardboard sport Doppelkopf behind the category.
A teenage celebration he referenced ended up with a bunch of scholars taking a collective pee within the college aquarium, in keeping with Der Spiegel journal.
There is a few scepticism that the teenage Merz was a lot of a rabble-rouser. A former classmate recalled that the younger Friedrich’s disruptive behaviour extra usually amounted to easily wanting “the last word”.
Whether on or off the report, individuals who have recognized him have advised me he enjoys a beer and might certainly be enjoyable, although few have been in a position to provide an anecdote for example this.
After college, he went on to navy service earlier than finding out regulation and marrying fellow pupil Charlotte Gass in 1981.
The couple have three youngsters.
For just a few years, Merz labored as a lawyer however he at all times had his eye on politics and was elected to the European Parliament in 1989, aged 33.
“We were both quite young and very fresh and let’s say unspoilt,” says Dagmar Roth-Behrendt, who turned an MEP on the identical time for the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
She discovered the younger Merz to be critical, dependable, sincere and well mannered.
Even humorous – a high quality that she feels is much less apparent now: “I assume the amount of bruises over time might have hardened him a bit.”
But did he come throughout early in his profession as a possible chancellor?
“I would have probably have said no, no way. Come on, you must be kidding!”
Yet everybody knew him to be deeply formidable and Merz quickly made the change from EU politics to Germany’s nationwide parliament, the Bundestag, in 1994.
Getty Images
As a younger MP within the Bundestag, Merz (L) talks to former Chancellor Helmut Kohl
He rose by way of the ranks, touted as a expertise on the celebration’s extra right-wing, traditionalist faction.
“He’s a splendid speaker and a profound thinker,” says Klaus-Peter Willsch, a CDU member of the Bundestag who has recognized him for greater than 30 years.
“A fighter,” says Willsch, evidenced by the truth that Merz made three makes an attempt to guide his celebration.
His first two failures, in 2018 and January 2021, may be learn as an indication of his battle to woo the grassroots.
But it was again within the early noughties, when his ambitions have been initially derailed, that he misplaced out to Angela Merkel in a celebration energy battle.
Merkel, the understated quantum chemist from the previous communist east, and Merz, the overtly-assured lawyer from the west, by no means a lot noticed eye-to-eye.
Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Friedrich Merz finally left politics in 2009, a number of years after rival Angela Merkel received the CDU celebration’s management
Merz glosses over this bitter episode in a short autobiographical submit on the CDU web site, saying that by 2009 he had determined to depart parliament to “make room for reflection”.
His years of reflection concerned forging a profession in finance and company regulation – changing into a boardroom government at varied worldwide corporations and, apparently, a millionaire.
It can be greater than a decade earlier than he returned to parliament, the place he has since sought to tear up Merkel’s extra centrist doctrine on CDU conservatism.
Getty Images
Merz tried however did not take over the management of the CDU from Merkel in 2018
A marked second of political severance got here on the finish of final month, when Friedrich Merz pushed by way of a non-binding movement on harder immigration guidelines, by counting on votes from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
He insisted there had been no direct collaboration with the AfD, however his transfer led to mass protests and has twice been condemned by none aside from Merkel herself.
These are uncommon public interventions by the girl who dominated Germany for 16 years.
Detractors say it was an unforgivable election gambit that can solely profit the AfD, however supporters insist Merz is, in reality, in search of to lure folks cleverly from the far proper.
Reuters
Protesters brandish an effigy of Merz sitting astride the red-arrow brand of the far-right AfD
He has risked alienating extra reasonable components of the citizens earlier than, voting within the Nineties in opposition to a invoice that included the criminalisation of marital rape.
He later defined that he thought-about marital rape to already be a criminal offense, and it was different points within the invoice that he objected to.
Polls recommend he’s not particularly in style amongst younger folks and ladies – however Klaus-Peter Willsch believes the image painted of him in German media is unfair.
“I had him several times in my constituency,” he tells me. “Afterwards, women come up and say he’s a nice guy.”
Charlotte Merz has likewise come to his defence, telling the Westfalenpost: “What some people write about my husband’s image of women is simply not true.”
She says their marriage has been one among mutual help: “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.”
His reputation will likely be put to the check because the election approaches, and in addition as hypothesis focuses much less on whether or not they’ll win and extra on who they could type a coalition with.
Some observers worry belief amongst potential coalition companions has been broken by Merz’s experimental method to tacit collaboration with the AfD – a celebration he insists he won’t ever govern with.
Whatever the critiques, one EU diplomat advised me Brussels was “anxiously awaiting his arrival”.
“It’s time to move on from this German deadlock and get that motor running.”
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