Two decades ago, before Friedrich Merz returned from the private sector to win the German Chancellery, he accepted an invitation to a rally of the French Foreign Legion in Corsica. At the last moment, the organizers asked him to arrive on the parade ground not by road or rail, but by parachute.
Mr. Merz, then a business lawyer, had never jumped from an airplane. But a participating colleague recently recalled that Mr. Merz had not hesitated. He made the jump – successfully, but with a little raw landing.
Now 69 years old and a politician, M. Merz tries a much more precarious jump with a similar risk of stumbling up. He was to become the next German Chancellor on Tuesday, after his party won the February national elections. But in a sign of the challenges he faced, Mr. Merz failed six votes during a first vote in Parliament.
He now faces a second cycle of voting and should possibly prevail.
Mr. Merz, who has no executive experience in the government, would take up his duties at the most difficult period for the nation since the reunification of East and Western Germany 35 years ago.
He and his coalition government, led by his central Christian Christian Democrats, will land in a series of national crises, including a stagnant economy and an efficient relationship with the United States.
An ascending nationalist party, the anti-immigrant alternative for Germany, or AFD, which German domestic information that has just classified as extremists, have exceeded Mr. Merz and his traditional political counterparts in certain polls.
During the months which followed the possibility of winning the elections in February, Mr. Merz was aggressive to meet these challenges.
He criticized President Trump and questioned the stability of American democracy, and he hung with foreign counterparts in order to lead a newly muscular Europe. He quickly broke up a key campaign promise on budgetary restrictions, reducing an agreement with the competitors of the center-left to relax the sacred limits of Germany to the government’s loan in order to spend “everything that is necessary” for national defense.
And despite AFD membership in order to spend new immigration restrictions shortly before the elections, he promised to avoid them once again in Parliament. He also made a commitment to divert asylum seekers.
The supporters of Mr. Merz say that the movements are the mark of an agile politician who has the potential to achieve the big problems that are worried about the German public: growth, defense, immigration.
“I think he is extremely well prepared and very deep and thoughtful,” said John P. Schmitz, an assistant White House advisor under George HW Bush. Schmitz helped hire Mr. Merz to work in the German offices of the law firm in Chicago Mayer Brown and jumped from the plane in Corsica with Mr. Merz around 2005.
But others think that Mr. Merz has trouble planning more than one step ahead, leading him to break up the promises. That, they say, has reduced its popularity.
Its invoices on expenses and migration have alienated many of its basic conservative voters. M. Merz and his party have sagged in the polls from the elections, and the AFD even pulled with them in certain surveys. It begins with one of the lowest approval ratings of all German leader in the modern era.
“There is this old saying:” Whatever you do, act judiciously and consider the end “,” said Ruprecht Polenz, former secretary general of Mr. Merz’s party. “This thought,” he added, “I think it’s not his main strength.”
Mr. Schmitz rejects such criticism, saying that Mr. Merz’s ability to be flexible is a sign of his leadership.
In the capital, Mr. Merz is known for his charm and his ability to warm up for new ideas. Friends sometimes complain that he is too strongly influenced by the last person to speak to him before he made a great decision – but that once he made this decision, he hates being disputed. This sometimes led criticism to accuse him of stubbornness.
In 2020, Mr. Merz 6 feet 6 inches gave an interview in which he was questioned about the perception that he was arrogant. “My size alone is, of course, a potential target for such prejudices,” he said. “Physically speaking, I despise a lot of people, so it’s just a little step to” look at them “.”
Former corporate lawyer with significant wealth, Mr. Merz promised a more conservative course in the country and the party he inherited from Angela Merkel, who left the Chancellery three and a half years ago.
This partly reflects its history in the West Sauerland region rich in Germany, a region that defines its policy and its personality. During his campaign, Mr. Merz ran on the slogan “More Sauerland for Germany”, evoking the image of the region as the heart of the country.
Every two years, he attended a ritual dating from the medieval era in the picturesque city of Bronil, where he was born and grew up, in which local men walk along the city’s borders before gathering for a party in the fields.
“This is what distinguishes him: he has always remained closely linked to his homeland and knows where he comes from,” said Niklas Frigger, the deputy mayor of Brillon, who is the party of Mr. Merz.
Mr. Merz also comes to town every several weeks, generally a Sunday, to drink coffee with his parents, who, at 97 and 101, recently moved into a senior house, according to residents. His wife, Charlotte Merz, is the chief judge of a local court in the city of Sauerland d’Arnsberg, where they live, and they have three adult children.
The new chancellor, who spoke of being wild as a young man before returning things and going to university, began his political career in 1989 to the European Parliament then embarrassing. He quickly moved to Berlin, where he quickly climbed the ranks of Christian Democrats, noticed for his leadership and his words of speech.
In the early 2000s, after losing a power struggle against Ms. Merkel, Mr. Merz diverted himself from politics and began a career in business law, advising customers who wanted to establish their businesses in Germany. Mr. Merz sat with several advice, including that of the American investment company Blackrock, before returning to politics after Ms. Merkel announced her retirement.
During his electoral campaign, Mr. Merz tried to draw from a desire during a time when the German economy was booming, the infrastructure was new and the bureaucracy worked.
But the challenges are mounted for him, taking a large part of his attention.
Despite the end of the February elections, Mr. Merz’s options were limited because the party had poorly performed. He had only one partner of plausible coalition, the social democrats, who had directed the previously unpopular government and recorded a record for their party in February.
To guarantee their votes for military spending and even more, Mr. Merz has given an unusual number of cabinet positions to his junior partner. He softened his plans on immigration, including his promise to reject asylum seekers at the border.
Mr. Merz expressed the hope of forging a positive relationship with Mr. Trump, but the Allies say that he has become more and more disenchanted by a series of actions from the American administration. They understood wishes to withdraw American troops in Europe and a discourse from the Vice-President JD Vance in Munich in which he attacked the Europeans on “freedom of expression” and warned them to stop parties like AFD.
Mr. Merz was also amazed by the dressing that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance gave Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian President and another ally, at the Oval Office. “In my opinion, it was not a spontaneous reaction to the statements of Zelensky, but rather an intentional climbing of tensions at the meeting at the Oval Office,” Merz said at the time.
Mr. Merz has rejected the Trump administration more and more, warning the Germans that they must assume responsibility for their own security. “Do you seriously believe that an American government will agree to continue NATO as before?” He asked the legislators in March.
Even many of those who criticized Mr. Merz’s leadership style approved his position towards the United States.
“I think he really understands how the world situation has changed and what changes in the United States,” said Polenz, former secretary general of Mr. Merz’s party. “He is a fervent supporter of transatlantic relations and will certainly try to maintain and stabilize all the relations between Germany, Europe and the United States as best he can. But there is no illusion as to the difficulty of the task to come.”
Tatiana First Berlin’s contributed reports.
