Friedrich Merz, from Merkel's eternal rival to Germany's new chancellor

BerlinJoachim-Friedrich Martin Josef Merz – Friedrich Merz’s full name – has gone from being Angela Merkel’s political rival within the conservative party to becoming Germany’s new chancellor. Merz, 69, will govern Europe’s largest economy for the next four years in coalition with the Social Democrats, after his party won the federal elections last FebruaryAnd after he has gained enough support in the Bundestag to be elected head of government, despite the scare of the first vote, in which he did not obtain enough votes: a warning that he probably will not have a peaceful term in office.

"In his independence and determination, he is more reminiscent of Gerhard Schröder than Angela Merkel. With his pragmatism and love of continuity, he is more reminiscent of Helmut Kohl than his admirers and detractors would wish," explains journalist Volker Resing in the biography Friedrich Merz: His Path to Power (Herder publishing house).

The new conservative chancellor was born on November 11, 1955, in Brilon, a town of 25,000 inhabitants in North Rhine-Westphalia, western Germany. Merz comes from a good family. His father, Joachim Merz, was a judge, and his mother, Paula Sauvigny, was from a bourgeois family of French origin. His grandfather, Josef Paul Sauvigny, was mayor of Brilon for twenty years (from 1917 to 1937). He was a conservative Catholic politician, but joined the Nazi Party after Adolf Hitler came to power. The new chancellor's family life has been marked by tragedy. His sister Melanie died in a car accident in the early 1980s at the age of 21. His brother, who suffered from multiple sclerosis, died before reaching the age of 50.

On a personal level, Merz, a lawyer by profession, is Catholic. He has been married for 45 years to Charlotte Merz, a judge and director of the Arnsberg District Court. The chancellor and his wife met while studying law. The couple have three children, all of whom are adults.

Merz's beginnings in politics

Germany's new chancellor, an archetypal West German, is very tall (1.98 m), slim, and always impeccably dressed in a suit and tie. With the appearance of a business executive, he is a highly professional man with very bourgeois manners, although he has a reputation for being arrogant and impulsive.

Merz joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in 1972 and began his career as a first-instance judge and as a lawyer for an international law firm, until he felt the political urge. Throughout his political career, he has served as a member of the European Parliament (1989-1994) and as a member of the Bundestag, first between 1994 and 2009 and again since 2021. Since January 2022, he has been chairman of the CDU, the party of Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl, and Angela Mer.

From politician to businessman

Merz's political ambitions were initially thwarted by Angela Merkel, his eternal rival in the Conservative Party and Chancellor of Germany for sixteen years (2005-2021). In fact, in 2008, Merz announced his retirement from the Bundestag and from active politics the following year. He returned to practicing law and entered the business world, where he became wealthy.

During that period, from 2009 to 2019, Merz was president of the Atlantik-Brücke, a renowned German non-profit association that promotes friendship between Germany and the United States and transatlantic relations. From 2016 to 2020, he headed the supervisory board of the German branch of the investment manager BlackRock.

In interviews, he admitted that his annual gross income is approximately one million euros, making him one of the highest-paid politicians in Germany, according to the magazine Focus"Merz is more than just a billionaire with a small plane," explained the author of his biography, Volker Resing, in a podcast for the political magazine PicaMerz, who holds a pilot's license, was criticized in 2022 for traveling on his private plane to attend a minister's wedding.

Return to politics

The conservative politician returned to politics at the end of the Merkel era. During the last election campaign, he presented himself as the anti-Merkel on immigration, and he succeeded. Pass a five-point plan to combat illegal immigration with the help of far-right votes in February past. His flirting with the far right earned him a public outburst from Merkel, who opened its doors to 1.2 million refugees and asylum seekers, mostly Syrians, between 2015 and 2016.

Before becoming chancellor, Merz won the seat in both chambers of Parliament. To make constitutional changes that would not only allow Germany to rearm, but also to launch a package of multi-million-dollar investments in infrastructure and the environment, Merz is thus leading a political revolution in a country like Germany, accustomed to financial discipline and austerity.