Who is Friedrich Merz? Germany’s front-runner who flirted with far right happymamay

He is the man who tends to be the next leader of Germany: an antidote to the crisis of trust in Europe, as his supporters say.

Friedrich Mirz is a familiar face of the Old Guard of the Conservative Party. Politically, he never encountered a pleasant.

However, his explosive attempt to tighten migration rules with the support of the far -right votes in Parliament reveals a man ready to gambling by breaking the main taboos.

It also represents another clear break from the position of the Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) in the center center party in its former 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 there is a feeling of inevitability that this 69 -year -old child might be on the threshold of getting the job that has been overwhelmed for a long time.

On January 23, one month until the federal elections in Germany, people gathered in one of the five -star Berlin hotels to hear Mirz to deliver a letter 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 that you might suggest.

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 the young Friedrich’s behavior often was just a desire for 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 was criticized from the former Communist East, and Mirz, did not see the publicly evaluated 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 last month, when Friedrich Mirz prompted a non -rigid migration rules, by relying on voices from the extreme right -wing alternative Für Deutschland (AFD).

He insisted that there was no direct cooperation with AFD, but his movement led to mass protests and was condemned twice by Merkel herself.

These are rare general interventions by women who ruled Germany for 16 years.

Critics say it was an unforgiving electoral maneuver that will only benefit AFD, but supporters insist that Merz, in fact, seek to attract people smartly from the far right.

He risked the mobilization of more moderate parts than voters before, 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 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.”

His popularity will be held on the test with the approaching elections, as well as speculation focuses on whether they will win and more over those who may form an alliance with him.

Some observers fear confidence between the potential coalition partners through the experimental approach to Mires for implicit cooperation with AFD – a party that insists that it will never rule it.

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.”