Who is Friedrich Merz? Germany front-runner moves away from right

He is the man who is set to become the next German leader: a medicine in European trust crisis, tell his supporters.

Friedrich Merz, 69, was a familiar face of the ancient party party.

Politically, he had never reached the enthusiasm. And yet he promises to give Germany a stronger leadership and squacking most of the problems in his country within four years.

His compiled bid to tie migration rules with the support of far parliament’s votes reveals a person who is ready to gamble with a major taboo.

It also marked another clear rest from his Christian democratic union (CDU) party’s party at his former marginal margin at Nera Merkel.

Although Merz finally fails to change the law, he launched a lightning bolt in an election campaign that has been harvested by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government collapse late last year.

Merkel was famous before he was chancellor, he stopped at Parliament completely to continue in a useful series of corporate jobs and written as yesterday’s people.

But there is a feeling of inevitably this 69-year-old-like-cusp can be in CUSP to participate in the job he or she desires for a long time.

This is 23 January, one month until the Snap Federal Election in Germany, and people gathered one of the five star hotel in Berlin to hear Merz give a foreign talk.

The buzz around the “ballroom” at Hotel de Roma is not exactly electric – but it’s a distant cry out of 20 years ago, if his care-political looks.

Merz was also a licensed pilot, criticizing 2022 for the flight of North German Island in Sylt in his private plane Christian Lindner.

As he took the stage at the Hotel de Roma, there was a respectful applause for the CDU conservative leader in Germany regularly at polls.

Height, slim, in a suit and glass, Merz cut a calm, convenience, like business as he intends to prepare a willingness for power.

But it’s a moving journey to get to this point.

Merz was born in the West German Town of Silon in 1955 to a famous conservative, Catholic family.

Her father served as a local judge, like Friedrich Merz’s wife Charlotte to this day.

The younger brother Merz joined CDU while still at school.

In an interview 25 years ago with a German newspaper owned by a young person’s censor than his tight CV can be suggested.

Among his mistakes, he describes racing streets on a motorcycle, hanging out with friends by a chip stand and playing card game Double head in the back of the class.

A teenage party he meant to end up with a group of students who took a collective pee at School Aquarium, according to the Der Spiegel magazine.

There were some doubt that the teenager Merz was a lot in a rabble-rabble. A former classmate remembers that Friedrich’s disturbing behavior is more likely to like “the last word”.

Whether or for records, people who know him tell me that he enjoys a beer and can really hide an anecddote to describe it.

After school, he continued military service before studying the law and married fellow student Charllotte Gass in 1981.

Couple has three children.

For several years, Merz worked as a lawyer but he was always a political eye and chose to the European Parliament in 1989, which was 33.

“We are very fresh and so fresh and say no matter,” says Dagamar Roth-Behendt, which has become a MEP in the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

He found the young Merz seriously, trustworthy, honest and respectful.

Although humorous – a quality he feels less clear now: “I think the amount of bruises in many times can harden him a little.”

But did he get off early in his career as a potential chancellor?

“Perhaps I may not say no, no way. Come, you have to be kidding!”

Although everyone knew him to be ambitious and merz soon made the switch from the EU politics at the National Parliament in Germany, the Bundestag, in 1994.

He has risen in the ranks, regarded as a talent to the most right-handed party, traditional faction.

“He was a beautiful speaker and a deep mind,” says Klaus-Peter Wilsch, a member of the CDE of the Bundesestag who knew him for more than 30 years.

“A fighter,” says Wassch, who has proven to the fact that Merz made three attempts to lead his party.

His first two failure, in 2018 and January 2021, can also be read as a sign of his Woo struggle with weeds.

But it returned to the first calves before, if his ambitions were initially suffered, he lost the Nela Merkel to struggle with the power of the Party.

Merkel, the immutable chemist from former Communist east, and Merz, the more secure lawyer from the west, never found in the eye.

Merz glossaka the bitter stage of a short posting of the CDU website, saying that in 2009 he decided to leave parliament “make place for meditation”.

Her meditation years involved in a career in the financial and corporate law – which became the executive of the boardroom with various international companies and, a millionaire.

It was more than a decade before he returned to Parliament, where he had ever been trying to rip a centrist centrik at CDU Conservatism.

A marked moment of political youth arrives at the end of last month, when Friedrich Merz pushes a non-heavy motion of votes from distance furtive (AFD).

He forced that there was no direct collaboration with the AFD, but his move brought mass protests and twice judged by himself.

These are the rare public interventions in the woman who dominated Germany for 16 years.

The detractors said it was an unforgivable election gambling to benefit only on the AFD, but supporters insisted Merz, trying to persuade people who were wise.

He jeopardizes from the more modest parts of Elgon before, vote in 1990 against a bill that includes criminal marriage width.

He later explained that he was considered marriage to become a crime, and other issues of the bill he opposed.

Polls suggested that he is not more popular with young and females – but Klaus-Peter Wasschoves believes that the picture is painted in German media.

“I have a moment in my understanding,” he told me. “Then, women come and say he is a good man.”

Charlotte Merz also came in defense, saying Westfalenpost: “What do some people write about the image of my husband with women who are not real.”

He says their marriage is one another’s support:

Her popularity will be set to the election test on Sunday, and also as the assumption focus on whether they win and they can do more coalition.

Whatever critics, a EU diplomat tells me Brusssels “is hilarious waiting for his arrival”.

“It’s time to move from this German deadlock and run the motor.”