Could go better for Olaf Scholz, first the election defeat in Schleswig-Holstein, now in NRW. And then there’s Friedrich Merz, who just doesn’t know what to do with his strength.
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Boris Herrmann, Robert Roßmann and Mike Szymanski, Berlin
There are apparently two Friedrich Merz in Germany at the moment. One still exists in the minds of many Germans. This Merz is a conservative hardliner who has fallen out of time and has a worldview in which the sun, moon and stars revolve around none other than himself. And then there is Friedrich Merz, who has recently appeared in public like a selfless party employee. Who acts as if he had never dreamed of anything other than the Christian Democratic promotion of women and young people. And that’s why the much younger CDU Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst and Daniel Günther leave room to bask in their impressive election victories. “I’m happy about everyone who wins elections in the CDU,” said this new Merz, who is not only looking to the future in terms of eyewear fashion, on Monday afternoon in Berlin’s Konrad-Adenauer-Haus.