New CDU chairman
Friedrich Merz: His family, his hobbies – the new CDU boss privately
Friedrich Merz and his wife Charlotte at the award ceremony for understanding and tolerance in November 2021
© Fabian Sommer / Picture Alliance
He made it on the third attempt. Friedrich Merz is the new chairman of the CDU. The 66-year-old has had a number of offices and tasks over the course of his career. Time to take a look at private individuals too.
Friedrich Merz thanks Twitter for the “overwhelming trust”. He has got where he wanted to: at the top of his party. It’s been a long road for the 66-year-old. Only at the third attempt did the CDU chairmanship work.
Friedrich Merz was born on November 11, 1955 in Brilon in the Hochsauerland, where he grew up and went to school. He is still closely connected to his homeland to this day. Merz lives in Arnsberg, also in the Hochsauerland, and has represented the constituency as a directly elected member of parliament since the federal election in September.
The conservative Merz, whom many associate with bite and ambition, had absolutely nothing to do with these virtues in his teenage years. “I got problems with my parents relatively early on, I had shoulder-length hair, and I raced through the city on my motorcycle,” he once told the Tagesspiegel about this time. “Because of some irreconcilable differences of opinion, especially in terms of discipline,” he and the Brilon grammar school split up. Joints at the chip shop, Friedrich Merz with electric guitar – that was a long time ago. His “bourgeoisisation” occurred when he became a father for the first time, according to Merz.
He moved to Bonn to study law and met his future wife Charlotte at an exam ceremony. For her it was “love at first sight”, she said in an interview with the “Bunte”. And in an interview with RTL: “We were both studying. Then there were offspring and we got married relatively quickly”. That was in 1981.
Friedrich Merz and Charlotte Merz have three grown children
The 60-year-old Charlotte Merz is now the director of the Arnsberg District Court. The couple have three grown children, a son and two daughters. The move out of the children was a new piece of freedom, “which required us to somehow move together and find each other as a couple,” said Charlotte Merz in an interview with the “Bunte”. Fortunately, they would have “survived this upheaval”. And rediscovered a lot, especially the beauty of nature. “We often go hiking, we like to go hiking in the mountains, and we ride a lot.” At Tegernsee the mountains are close, that’s where the family has a holiday home.
Friedrich Merz with his wife Charlotte and daughter Constanze at the Oppenheim Union race in summer 2006
© Jörg Carstensen / Picture Alliance
Friedrich Merz also likes to look at beautiful landscapes from above: The politician is a private pilot. Three years ago, the public was concerned with the question of how many aircraft Merz now owns. A topic also because, according to his own attribution, Merz does not see himself as a man of the upper class, but of the upper middle class.
His work in business, however, was quite lucrative. After his first time in the Bundestag, Merz took care of his law firm and went into business, at the US asset manager Blackrock he was chairman of the supervisory board for Germany. From 1989 to 1994 Merz was a member of the European Parliament, then he sat in the Bundestag until 2009, and from 2000 to 2002 as Union parliamentary leader. A year later, Merz coined the term “tax return on the beer mat”. This prospect should attract the electorate. Winning this will also be the challenging task of the new CDU chairman in the future.
Sources: friedrich-merz.de, RTL, RND, “Tagesspiegel”, “Mercury”