Who is Friedrich Merz? Germany’s Christian Democratic Union leader who flirted with far right

With the exit polls in, Fredres Mirz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) – is scheduled to become a consultant in the upcoming Germany.

His party is expected to win about 29 % of the sounds. The question now is the one who may form an alliance with it.

His supporters described him as an antidote to the crisis of trust in Europe, Mirz, 69, is a familiar face of the old goalkeeper of his party.

Politically, he never encountered a pleasant. However, it promises to provide Germany with the strongest leadership and address many of his country’s problems within four years.

His explosive offer revealed last month to tighten migration rules with the support of advanced right -wing votes in Parliament, a man ready to gamble by breaking the main taboos.

It also represented another clear break from the most middle CDU position under its former opponent of the party, Angela Merkel.

Although Mirz eventually failed to change the law The collapse of the government of Chancellor Olaf Schools Late last year.

It was marginalized by Merkel before becoming a consultant, he left the entire parliament to follow a profitable series of corporate jobs and was removed as yesterday’s man.

But it now seems ready to photograph the job that has been overwhelmed for a long time.

On January 23, one month before the federal elections in Germany, people gathered in a five -star Berlin hotel to hear Mirz giving a speech in foreign policy.

The “Celebration Hall” at the De Roma Hotel is not completely electric – but it is far from 20 years, when he looked at his political career.

Mirz is also a licensed pilot, and he was criticized in 2022 because he was flying to the northern German island of Cellet on his own plane for his political colleague Christian Lindner.

While taking to the theater at the De Rome Hotel, there is a polite applause for the CDU opposition leader in Germany, who are constantly advancing in the polls.

Long tall, skinny, in a suit and glasses, Mirz cuts a calm and traditional character similar to a business as he tries to offer a willingness to power.

But it was a winding journey to reach this point.

Mirz was born in the West German town of Brailon in 1955 in a prominent Catholic family.

His father served as a local judge, as well as Charlotte, the wife of Friedrich Mirz to this day.

The younger Merz joined CDU while still at school.

In an interview 25 years ago with the German newspaper Tagespiegel, he made a demand for a young man and tricks more than his luminous biography.

Among his wrong adventures, describing the race in the streets on a motorcycle, hanging with friends through a chip and playing the paper game Doppelkopf In the back of the chapter.

It ended with the teenage party he referred to with a group of students who take Paul in the school basin, according to the Monastery of Deir Sibl.

There are some doubts that the teenager Mirz was a great pioneer. A former colleague recalled that Frederich’s sabotager behavior often simply wanted to “the last word”.

Whether it is or outside the record, the people who knew him told me that he enjoyed beer and could be already enjoyable, although a few of them were able to provide a story to clarify this.

After school, he went to military service before studying the law and marrying his colleague, student Charlotte Gas, in 1981.

The couple have three children.

For a few years, Mirz worked as a lawyer, but he was always watching politics and was elected to the European Parliament in 1989, 33.

“We were very young and we were very young and let’s say unanimously,” says Dagmar Ruth Berndt, who at the same time became the Social Democratic Democratic Party in the center.

I found that the young Mirz was dangerous, reliable, honest and polite.

Even the humor – the quality that you feel is less clear now: “I assume the amount of bruises over time may be a little bit.”

But did he encounters early in his career as a possible consultant?

“Perhaps I was saying no, no, come on, you should knew!”

However, everyone knew that he was very ambitious and Mirz quickly shifted from the European Union policy to the National Parliament in Germany, The Bundestag, in 1994.

It has risen through the ranks, and reached a talent in the most right -wing traditional faction.

“He is a great speaker and a deep thinker,” said Klaus Peter Wellsh, a member of the CDU in Bundestag who has known him for more than 30 years.

“A fighter,” says Wilsh.

His first failure, in 2018 and January 2021, can also be read as a sign of his struggle to attract popular rules.

But he returned in the early Nushts, when his ambitions came out at first, he lost it to Angela Merkel in a conflict over party power.

Merkel, the quantum chemist who numbered the former Communist East, and Mirz, did not see publicly guaranteed from the West, never face to face.

Mirz shines on this bitter episode in a brief biography on the CDU, saying that by 2009 he decided to leave Parliament “to make way for thinking.”

The years of thinking included the enhancement of a profession in the financing law and the corporate law – to become an executive official in the board of directors in various international companies, and Melioneer.

It will be more than a decade before returning to Parliament, where he has since sought to tear Merkel’s most mediums’ doctrine on maintaining CDU.

A noticeable moment of political separation came at the end of January, when Friedrich Mirz prompted a unnecessary proposal to the totally totally migration rules, by relying on the voices of the extreme right -wing alternative Für Deutschland (AFD).

He insisted on the absence of direct cooperation with AFD, but his movement led to mass protests and was convicted twice by Merkel herself.

These were rare general interventions by the woman who ruled Germany for 16 years.

The critics said that it was an indispensable electoral maneuver, but the supporters insisted that Mirz was, in fact, to attract people smartly from the far right.

He risked the mobilization of more moderate parts of voters, as he voted in the 1990s against a bill that included criminalizing marital rape.

He later explained that he had already considered marital rape a crime, and other issues in the draft law were the one who objected to it.

Opinion polls indicate that it is not very popular among young people and women – but Klaus Peter Wilsh believes that the image drawn from it in the German media is unfair.

“I made him several times in my electoral district,” he tells me. “Then, women come and say he is a nice man.”

Charlotte Mirz has the same in defense, and told Westfalenpost: “What some people write about my husband’s image about women is simply incorrect.”

She says that their marriage was one of the mutual support: “We both took care of each other’s functions and divided the care of children in a way that is compatible with our professional obligations.”

Whatever criticism, a European Union diplomat told me, “He is waiting for his arrival concern.”

“It is time to move from this German stalemate and make this engine work.”