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Roman Deininger, Andreas Glas, Johann Osel and Klaus Ott
Anyone who met Stephan Mayer personally in his last days as CSU general secretary saw a man under pressure, but couldn’t really make sense of him either. On Monday, the day before the big bang, Mayer is almost on his way to Cologne for the joint CDU and CSU executive committee meeting. But before that, a short “press background” is scheduled at the CSU party headquarters in the north of Munich, with coffee and the butter pretzels that are obligatory in Bavarian politics: a gleaning of the CSU party conference from the weekend, the first under Mayer’s direction as general secretary. Such background discussions are not to be quoted verbatim, but an impression is created.