Comment: Angela Merkel, the cold mother of the CDU

Created: 01/21/2022, 18:30

By: Georg Anastasiadis

A comment by Georg Anastasiadis © Wolfgang Kumm/dpa/ Marcus Schlaf

Angela Merkel breaks ties with the CDU: she rejects the honorary presidency and even a reconciliation dinner.

Your party is in shock before the election of Friedrich Merz as the new party leader.

A commentary by Georg Anastasiadis.

Angela Merkel rejects the CDU honorary chair that has been offered to her, and she is also not interested in a reconciliation dinner with her successor Friedrich Merz and the previous CDU leaders Laschet and Schäuble, as well as leading party friends. The icy coldness with which the ex-Chancellor treats the party, to which she owes everything, makes even outsiders shiver. In the CDU itself, however, the behavior of the woman, whom many called "mother", caused a shock: the break that so many warned about is now here, and of all things at the party conference. But it wasn't brought about by Merz, who recently tried very hard to find friendly words for his predecessor. But Merkel.

This thwarts the efforts of the new leadership around Merz to reunite the deeply divided party and casts dark shadows on the party conference, which is to elect the 66-year-old as the new chairman this Saturday. Merkel does not forgive the party members for electing their archenemy as their new leader with a huge majority, but she is taking the risk – or is she aiming? - with their irreconcilability the destruction of their CDU. Does the eternal chancellor really need it? True greatness would have been to put aside one's own anger and perhaps also the injuries suffered and to reach out a hand in reconciliation to the party that was lying on the ground. As a bad loser, she now goes down in history a little smaller. Edmund Stoiber and Theo Waigel show in the CSU what honorary chairmen can do for the good of their party. embody bothdespite all the contradictions, soul and conscience of the party and can mediate with authority if it serves the peace in the party.

For those who are now responsible in the CDU, the break with the former mother is a drama, but also an opportunity.

You can now, freed from the pressure of having to defend Merkel's legacy that weighs tons, dare to make a fresh start and give the party that has lost its shape a face again.

The Union does not have to rely on gender asterisks in order to be modern, it can finally call the energy policy of the past 16 years what it is – a huge pile of fragments – and listen to its voters again when it comes to migration policy.