‘Lawyer, pro-business Conservative’: Who is Friedrich Merz, set to become Germany’s next chancellor

Born on November 11, 1955 in Brilon town, Merz comes from a family with a strong background of legal practice

Germany’s Conservative leader Friedrich Merz is set to lead the nation after his party, Christian Democratic Union, bagged the biggest vote share in the country’s general elections, defeating Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Who is Friedrich Merz?

Born on November 11, 1955 in Brilon town, Merz comes from a family with a strong background of legal practice. Merz began studying law in 1976, however, he has been a part of CDU since 1972. He married Charlotte Merz in 1981, who was a fellow lawyer and is now a judge, and has three children with her.

A protege of the late Wolfgang Schaeuble, finance minister and icon of German fiscal conservatism, Merz enjoyed a meteoric rise through his Christian Democrats, becoming the party’s parliamentary leader in the 2000s.

Tall and with a sonorous voice, the arch-conservative Merz was a perfect figure for the party in 1989 – when he first won elected office for the European Parliament.

Hailing from the Sauerland, a Catholic upland region in far western Germany known for its social conservatism and close-knit village communities, he embodied many of the virtues of West Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall – transatlanticist, business-oriented and socially conservative.

However, reunification in 1990 allowed Angela Merkel, the East German daughter of a protestant pastor, to enter politics and elbow both Schaeuble and Merz aside on her rise to become chancellor.

The east continues to be Merz’s weak spot. A Forsa poll on Friday showed that unlike his Social Democrat and Green rivals, this distinctly Rhineland figure is still far less trusted in the east than the west.

It is also the east that gave rise to the greatest challenge to Merz’s authority in the guise of the far-right AfD, which took first place in one eastern regional election last year and could yet greatly constrain his ability to govern after the elections.

Never the favourite of his party’s professional advisers, Merz was twice rejected as Merkel’s successor as party leader, in 2018 and 2021, before his doggedness won out in 2022.

He took office pledging to kill off the nativist AfD by breaking with Merkel’s centrism and moving the party rightwards. The AfD, on 10% when he took office, is now on 21%, nine points behind the conservatives.

“I want to do politics so that a party like the AfD is no longer needed in Germany,” he told a congress of his conservatives in January, blaming the Social Democrat Scholz and his Green partners for creating the conditions that nurtured the AfD.

In January, responding to two high-profile killings in which immigrants were the main suspects, he manoeuvred to get a resolution demanding a clampdown on migration through parliament, knowing that it would only pass with AfD support. Critics, even in his own ranks, saw this as an unforgivable breach of a political quarantine designed to keep the AfD out of power.

Nationwide protests ensued.

For some, it was a case of Merz’s strategic sense not matching the acute tactical skills that enabled him to repeatedly pin down Scholz, first with a 2022 visit to Kyiv that exposed the chancellor’s hesitancy on supporting Ukraine, and then by getting a court to strike down a budget, setting in motion the chain of events that collapsed Scholz’s government.

The migration vote created a lingering sense of distrust, and fueled concerns that he may struggle to persuade other parties to govern with him, a necessity in Germany’s proportional electoral system.

“I don’t want to suggest Merz plans (a coalition with the AfD), but I have to say my personal confidence that he won’t do it after the election if that’s his only way of becoming Chancellor – that’s gone,” said Ulf Buermeyer, host of the popular and influential podcast State of the Nation.