When Fritz Güntzler, a backbench MP from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’ center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), arrived with his campervan in Zingst in north-eastern Germany, he was looking forward to a relaxing time on the Baltic Sea coast.
But on July 23 at around 5 p.m., suddenly the chancellor was on the phone, a call completely out of the blue: Would he, Güntzler, want to become Germany’s next transport minister, to be introduced to the media the next morning? To this, the 60-year-old tax and finance expert, who had been sitting in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, for 13 years, said yes—and set events in motion that have led to a severe crisis within the CDU. If things pan out particularly badly, the moment may even mark the beginning of the end of Merz’ chancellorship.
A Botched Reshuffle
It all started with the not-entirely-voluntary resignation of the Christian Democrats’ parliamentary leader, Jens Spahn, on July 18. Spahn, one of only a handful of semi-plausible rivals to Merz within the CDU/CSU, had confirmed to tabloid BILD that he and his husband had become fathers via surrogacy in the United States. Until that point, Spahn’s homosexuality had not mattered politically; but this development proved highly problematic for the Christian Democrats. Surrogacy is illegal in Germany, and in the past, Spahn, who had been positioning himself strongly on the conservative wing of his party, had come out against the practice. In an emergency meeting, Merz and Markus Söder, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party CSU, made clear that only a speedy resignation would do. Afterwards Spahn, somewhat reluctantly, quit.
Thus, there was suddenly a vacancy at the heart of the Merz government; Spahn had worked well with his center-left Social Democratic (SPD) counterpart, the left-winger Matthias Miersch, and others in the coalition, to the point that news weekly DER SPIEGEL suggested only a week before Spahn’s departure that the parliamentary leader had become something akin to a shadow chancellor, doing all the political deals to advance Germany’s reform program while Merz was kept out of the loop.
After a few days of toing and froing, the chancellor decided to nominate his head of the chancellery, Thorsten Frei, for the parliamentary leadership. While Frei’s record is mixed at best, he is well-liked by his parliamentary colleagues and a staunch Merz loyalist. Health Minister Nina Warken was ordered to take over Frei’s job, and CDU secretary general Carsten Linnemann, who embarrassingly had ruled himself out for such a position only a year ago, was put in charge of the health ministry. Neither was particularly thrilled.
But then Merz decided to use the mini-reshuffle to also fire Transport Minister Patrick Schnieder. Given that the Merz government has set up a debt-financed €500 billion “special fund” for additional infrastructure spending to accompany the country’s huge rearmament push (see the previous BERLIN CABLE), Schnieder’s job appeared comparatively easy. Merz, however, was unhappy with the lack of speed and urgency the ministry had been turning that new money into projects—and that Schnieder was not willing enough to consider public-private partnerships.
Public-Private Partnerships
For Merz, this 1990s idea is a key concept to mobilize private capital and thus “leverage” the billions and billions of euros in new debt, something that many in the CDU continue to be unhappy about (ahead of the 2025 election, Merz had promised to stick to Germany’s “debt brake,” but then agreed to massive debt-financed expenditure for defense and infrastructure). To be able to tell voters that the new debt works toward multiplying infrastructure investments would be useful in elections (even though experts argue that public-private partnerships often end up costing taxpayers more in the end). Schnieder and his ministry remained skeptics, and the minister did not shy away from complaining that the core transport budget kept being cut considerably.
So Merz looked for a finance rather than a transport expert to replace Schnieder, and seemed to have found him in Güntzler, who was picked up by a black limousine that sped him back to Berlin in a nighttime drive. But back at his apartment, Güntzler had second thoughts. Was he really qualified for the post, with no experience in transport policy whatsoever? At 4:30 a.m. in the morning, he texted Merz and asked to speak again. He then told the chancellor that he did not want to become a minister after all.
A Major Problem
Now Merz and his team had a major problem on their hands, because the news that Schnieder would be kicked out had already leaked. Finding someone else—the CDU’s Steffen Bilger, chairman of the Bundestag’s transport committee and a former deputy transport minister—took days; in the meantime Schnieder announced that he would resign “to end this undignified situation.”
The botched reshuffle, which also included some changes at the deputy minister level, has caused huge anger within the CDU; many feel that Schnieder had been treated badly. Even more shocking for many was Merz’ half autocratic, half amateurish actions to replace a minister he didn’t want anymore—at a time when the Christian Democrats, with their unpopular chancellor at the helm, have dropped to 21 percent in national polling, while the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has continued to climb, to 28 percent, and with key regional elections coming up next month.
Important voices within the CDU see the party on the cusp of breaking with Merz, with whom many are deeply disappointed. In a sign of what may come, the chancellor was reportedly reminded in internal meetings that he is leading “a party, not a company.” Some CDU insiders describe it as the deepest crisis in the CDU’s 81-year history.
Make-or-Break Elections
And it may well get worse. On September 6, the far-right AfD will likely win big in Saxony-Anhalt, the former East German state that used to be dominated by the CDU; on September 20, there are elections in two other Eastern states, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania (the AfD is particularly strong also in the latter).
Based on current polling, the question in Saxony-Anhalt is whether the AfD will win enough seats for an absolute majority or whether they will fall short. The latter outcome may even be worse for the CDU. In such a case, some of their deputies might defect, to enable the AfD to form a regional government—which would be the first and thus break a taboo.
Until now, there has been a “firewall” between the AfD and the other parties: All have said they won’t work with the far-right party, which Germany’s domestic intelligence service considers extremist (there is also the question of whether it should be outlawed, which is possible under Germany’s postwar constitution). If the firewall is broken in Saxony-Anhalt by the CDU there, this could lead to splits, perhaps into an East- and West-CDU in the first instance.
A “Chancellor Switch”
A crisis of such dimensions then could lead to what most still consider unlikely: a “chancellor switch” and the end of Merz’ chancellorship. Two conditions need to be met. First, the rest of the CDU leadership, the state premiers, and most functionaries within the Christian Democrats need to be so fed up with Merz that they see no alternative to replacing him, because otherwise losing the next national election, scheduled for early 2029, would be a foregone conclusion. Second, Merz would need to agree to step down.
Merz’ most likely replacement would be Hendrik Wüst, who is state prime minister in North Rhine-Westphalia where he leads a successful coalition government with the Greens and is far more centrist than Merz and those in the CDU who had put so much faith in him. But in such an unprecedented crisis, Wüst may well appear preferable even to the Merz-ultras who had dreamt of conservative CDU revival after the supposedly far-too-centrist Angela Merkel years (which was always a fantasy).
Germany, and Merz, are facing crucial weeks.
Henning Hoff is executive editor of INTERNATIONALE POLITIK QUARTERLY.
