There is a telling rumor in Berlin political circles. Upon his appointment as leader of Germany’s Christian Democrats (CDU) in 2022, Friedrich Merz was gifted a copy of Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) by his conservative colleague Wolfgang Schäuble, the veteran former finance minister and then president of the German parliament. A dismayed Merz is said to have handed back the book shortly after, exclaiming: “But this is a novel — what am I supposed to do with this?”
The novel in question, authored by the last aristocratic ruler of a remote island principate in Sicily, revolves around the old social order’s attempt to contend with the threat of rapid political change, encapsulated by its most famous phrase: “If we want things to remain as they are, things will have to change.” On the surface, this isn’t too dissimilar from the situation in which Merz finds himself. The new German chancellor, sworn in on Tuesday after a shaky confirmation vote in parliament, was once dubbed “the prince of neoliberalism” and is very much an unreconstructed representative of a system whose time has come.
Merz’s own origin story is also patrician and set in a conservative backwater. He was born into the Sauvigny family, a minor branch of landed nobility in the Sauerland, the picturesque mountainous region in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Despite some early indiscretions — at one point he sported shoulder-length hair, rode a motorcycle, and was expelled from his first school — Merz’s early life is a faithful reflection of his class background. Raised staunchly Roman Catholic, he served in the military, joined a student fraternity (which in Germany are known as incubators of reactionary politics), and received a scholarship to study law at Bonn University. Following in his father’s footsteps, he became a judge upon graduation.
His first foray into politics, as a member of European Parliament, was relatively uneventful. After his…
Auteur: Dominik A. Leusder
