Germany’s new chancellor-elect: Who is Friedrich Merz?

In an election with the highest turnout seen since reunification (83,5 percent), provisional results suggest the CDU / CSU have won the 2025 German federal election with 28,5 percent of the vote.

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) doubled their support with 20,8 percent, Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) saw the worst result in its history with 16,4 percent, the Greens’ share dropped to 11,6 percent, the Left Party made big gains to 8,7 percent and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) didn’t make the “5 percent hurdle” required to enter the Bundestag.

A victorious, CDU chancellor-elect Friedrich Merz is now tasked with forming a coalition government. We take a look at his political backstory:

Merz: CDU member since his school days

Off the central marketplace in Brilon, a town in North Rhine-Westphalia, sits a cream, green-shuttered building which could be mistaken for a post office or museum.

Haus Sauvigny was built in 1752 and became the residence of Huguenot descendants the Sauvigny Family. The property was carried on to Josef Paul Sauvigny, elected in 1917 as Brilon mayor for the Zentrumspartei and later the Nazi Party, then to his daughter Paula Sauvigny, where she would raise her children, including Germany’s incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz, born in 1955.

Merz’s father was Joachim-Friedrich Martin Josef Merz, a judge and long-term member of the CDU. A young Merz would follow Joachim-Friedrich’s path, joining the centre-right party’s Youth Wing while still at school and, after a brief military service career, upping to Bonn in 1976 to study law.

The Brilon Marktplatz of Merz's misspent youth - Image credit: Tanja Esser / Shutterstock.com

Merz claims he had a “cracking” work ethic during his school years, a diligence which might explain his bemusement at a reporter’s question during the recent campaign trail, “Will weed (Bubatz) stay legal?”, “Will what stay legal? What is Bubatz?,” Merz replied, “If you mean cannabis, then no. We want to correct that”. 

But Merz has told tales of misspent youth. In a 2000 interview with Tagesspiegel, he recounted stories of an “obstreperous” long-haired, 13-year-old who cruised the streets of Brilon on a motorbike. 

He started hanging out on the Marktplatz, eating Pommes, drinking beers and smoking, before eventually leaving the Brilon Gymnasium, where his father taught law, for consistent bad behaviour. But since the now infamous Tagesspiegel interview was published, countless journalists visiting Brilon have failed to find anyone to substantiate Merz’s claims of teenage rebellion.

He would meet his wife Charlotte, another fledgling judge, at a party in Brilon in 1980. The pair married in 1981 and Merz finished law school in 1985, becoming a judge in Saarbrücken and then a lawyer for the German Chemical Industry Association until 1989.

Merz’s entrance into EU and German politics

Fewer than three months before the Berlin Wall crumbled, Merz made his formal entrance into politics, winning a seat in the 1989 European Parliament elections, which he would hold until 1994.

He was imminently elected in Hochsauerland, initiating his transition from Brussels to Bundestag politics. Despite being caught sleeping in parliament by TV producers, who he threatened to sue for broadcasting the footage, Merz rose quickly in the CDU / CSU ranks, becoming vice chair several times under party leader Angela Merkel.

The pair often knocked heads, Merz coming from the more conservative side of the party and allegedly a member of the secret, all-male “Andean Pact” group founded in the 1970s, which opposed Merkel’s leadership.

Portraits in the Bundestag of Angela Merkel and Friedrich Merz - Image credit: Mirko Kuzmaovic / Shutterstock.com

The once rising star of the CDU lost to his old adversary in the 2002 leadership election, but continued work in the party until 2009, before a departure from politics to the private sector.

First working as a finance lawyer in Düsseldorf, the former judge then began a career at the US multinational insurance company BlackRock and has held jobs at HSBC, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and toilet paper production company Wepa, plum positions which have allegedly made Merz a multimillionaire.

All the trimmings of wealth, including two private jets which he personally pilots to Mallorca or Sylt, have put him under scrutiny from opposing politicians.

Back with a bang upon Merkel’s departure

In 2018, Merz came back to the Bundestag with a bang. The same day Merkel announced she wouldn’t stand in the CDU / CSU leadership election, the Sauerlander announced his political comeback.

“She was a real thorn in his side,” ARD journalist Sarah Frühauf told Tagesschau in a recent interview, “I wonder if her retirement wasn’t a kind of motivation for Merz to take another shot [in politics]”.

Headbutting with Merkel isn’t the only ghost of his political past which haunts how Merz is perceived. His 1990 Bundestag vote against criminalising marital rape (he now says he would vote differently) and a reputation as a “macho” politician, were both sparks for a then-Twitter campaign #WirFrauenGegenMerz (Us women against Merz), which ran during the 2021 leadership election.

His comeback came with drawbacks, Merz would lose two CDU leadership elections, to Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer in 2018 and Armin Laschet in 2021, before eventually becoming party leader in 2022.

While his opponents for CDU / CSU party leader advertised themselves as Merkel 2,0, Merz promised a distinct diversion from her policies, a return to the CDU traditionalist conservativism.

Since filling the post he has remained steadfast in this redirection, pushing for long-term border controls, rejecting asylum seekers at the border, deporting long-term Syrian residents in Germany following Assad’s fall, increasing the cases where criminals can have their German citizenship revoked, further empowering the police to enact deportations and scrapping cannabis legalisation and the self-identification law.

February 2025, Cologne locals demonstrate against Mer'z cooperation with the AfD - Image credit: Ryan Nash Photography / Shutterstock.com

As the CDU was polling in first just a month out from the election, the leader perhaps tried to give voters a taste of what their new coalition leader might offer. In the wake of a terrorist attack involving a 28-year-old Afghan asylum seeker, Merz announced he would bring two non-binding motions on immigration crackdowns to the Bundestag floor.

Most importantly, he was willing to pass them with support from the AfD. Merz’s move dismissed the "firewall" (Brandmauer), a long-term agreement between Germany’s mainstream parties not to collaborate with extremist parties, but he went ahead and the motions passed. His move also sparked mass protests. 

What the coming five years of Merz’s chancellorship bring remains to be seen, but first, he faces the task of drawing up a coalition agreement, a 2025 federal budget and shaking his new reputation as the man who fanned the flames on the other side of a crumbling Brandmauer.

Thumb image credit: Ryan Nash Photography / Shutterstock.com