Germany’s favourite political feud is no more. After 22 entertaining years, ex-chancellor Angela Merkel and Friedrich Merz, her rival and chancellor hopeful, have buried the hatchet in public – instead of in each other.
The scene of their public reconciliation: a Christian Democratic Union event on Wednesday evening to mark, belatedly, Merkel’s 70th birthday in July.
“Dear Friedrich, everyone knows we have had our highs and lows,” said the birthday girl, prompting knowing nods in a packed hall in central Berlin.
The high came in 2000 when Merkel snatched the leadership of the CDU, still reeling from a donations scandal, and appointed Merz as her deputy.
The low came in 2002 when Merkel, sensing danger from her ambitious deputy, took on his parliamentary party leadership role. He withdrew from politics, entered investment banking and became a millionaire.
Things got even lower in 2018 when Merkel announced her planned withdrawal from politics – but thwarted Merz’s ambitions of returning as her successor. Two failed CDU leaders and a lost federal election later, Merz finally got what he wanted in 2022 – the CDU leadership – and Merkel got on with writing her memoirs.
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Due in November, the book will lack the last chapter of the feud that concluded on Wednesday night with warm – if ambiguous – words from Merz.
It was an “honour” to host the event for Merkel, “a personality that shaped this country”, he said. Like all politicians and their legacy, he added, the consequences were best left for historians.
Or biographers like Eckhart Lohse, political correspondent with the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine daily. In his new work: Deceit: Merkel and her Germans, he argues that her four-term run as chancellor was based on an unspoken deal: in exchange for her promise of a quiet life in increasingly complex times, the public gave Merkel their support.
“And they were happy to be fooled,” said Lohse at the book presentation last week. The consequence, as he sees it: she left behind a country with a serious reform backlog, racing to break its Russian energy dependency with a recession-hobbled economy.
The book is filled with sobering observations from other Merkel rivals.
The late Wolfgang Schäuble, who lost the party leadership to her before serving in three Merkel cabinets, told Lohse he backed Merkel’s fateful 2015 decision to keep Germany’s borders open – but not what happened afterwards.
“She didn’t address the impression it gave many that everyone could come, ‘Germany is open’,” he said.
Another Merkel rival, former Hesse state premier Roland Koch, suggested her secret was to set aside her principles in favour of pragmatic politics.
“She acquired a charismatic image,” he added, “from non-charismatic components.”