Friedrich Merz, Germany’s New Leader, Leaps Into a World of Crises

Two decades ago, before Friedrich Merz came back from the private sector to win the German chancellorship, he accepted an invitation to a gathering of the French Foreign Legion in Corsica. At the last moment, the organizers asked him to arrive on the parade ground not by road or rail, but by parachute.

Mr. Merz, then a corporate lawyer, had never jumped out of a plane. But a fellow attendee recalled recently that Mr. Merz did not hesitate. He made the jump — successfully, but with a bit of a rough landing.

Now 69 and a politician, Mr. Merz is attempting a much more precarious leap with a similar risk of stumbling.

On Tuesday, Mr. Merz, who has no executive experience in government, will become Germany’s 10th chancellor. He will take office at the most challenging time for the nation since the reunification of East and West Germany 35 years ago.

The new chancellor and his coalition government, led by his center-right Christian Democrats, will land in a series of national crises, including a stagnant economy and a frayed relationship with the United States.

An ascendant nationalist party, the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which German domestic intelligence just classified as extremist, has surpassed Mr. Merz and his mainstream political counterparts in some polls.

In the months since his party won elections in February, Mr. Merz has been aggressive about addressing those challenges.

He has criticized President Trump and questioned the stability of American democracy, and he has huddled with foreign counterparts in an effort to lead a newly muscular Europe. He quickly broke a key campaign promise on fiscal restraint, cutting a deal with center-left rivals to relax Germany’s hallowed limits on government borrowing in order to spend “whatever it takes” on national defense.

An despite joining the AfD in an effort to pass new immigration restrictions shortly before the election, he has vowed to shun them in Parliament once more. He has also reversed a pledge to turn away asylum seekers.

Mr. Merz’s supporters say the moves are the hallmark of an agile politician with the potential to deliver on the big issues worrying the German public: growth, defense, immigration.

“I think he’s extremely well prepared and very deep and thoughtful,” said John P. Schmitz, a deputy White House counsel under George H.W. Bush. Mr. Schmitz helped hire Mr. Merz to work in the German offices of the Chicago law firm Mayer Brown and jumped out of the plane in Corsica with Mr. Merz around 2005.

But others think that Mr. Merz struggles to plan more than one step ahead, leading him to break promises. That, they say, has cut into his popularity.

His about-faces on spending and migration have alienated many of his base conservative voters. Mr. Merz and his party have sagged in the polls since the election, and the AfD has drawn even with them in some surveys. He is starting with one of the lowest approval ratings of any German leader in the modern era.

“There’s this old saying: ‘Whatever you do, act wisely and consider the end,’” said Ruprecht Polenz, a former secretary general of Mr. Merz’s party. “This thinking,” he added, “I feel is not his main strength.”

Mr. Schmitz dismisses such criticism, saying that Mr. Merz’s ability to be flexible is a sign of his leadership.

In the capital, Mr. Merz is known for his charm and ability to warm to new ideas. Friends sometimes complain that he is too heavily influenced by the last person to speak with him before he makes a big decision — but that, once he makes that decision, he hates to be challenged on it. That has sometimes caused critics to accuse him of stubbornness.

In 2020, the 6-foot-6-inch Mr. Merz gave an interview in which he was asked about the perception he was arrogant. “My height alone is, of course, a potential target for such prejudices,” he said. “Physically speaking, I look down on many people, so it’s only a small step to ‘looking down on them.’”

A former corporate lawyer with significant wealth, Mr. Merz has promised a more conservative course in both the country and the party he inherited from Angela Merkel, who left the chancellery three and a half years ago.

That partly reflects his background in the Sauerland region of the wealthy west of Germany, a region that defines his politics and persona. During his campaign, Mr. Merz ran on the slogan “More Sauerland for Germany,” evoking the region’s image as a heartland of the country.

Every two years he attends a ritual dating from Medieval times in the picturesque town of Brilon, where he was born and raised, in which local men walk along the town’s borders before gathering for a party in the fields.

“This is what distinguishes him: He has always remained closely connected to his homeland and knows where he comes from,” said Niklas Frigger, the deputy mayor of Brilon, who is from Mr. Merz’s party.

Mr. Merz also comes to the town every several weeks, usually on a Sunday, to drink coffee with his parents, who, at 97 and 101, recently moved into a senior home, residents say. His wife, Charlotte Merz, is the chief judge of a local court in the Sauerland town of Arnsberg, where they live, and they have three grown children.

The new chancellor, who has talked about being wild as a youth before turning things around and going to university, started his political career in 1989 in the then-fledgling European Parliament. He soon moved to Berlin, where he quickly climbed the ranks of the Christian Democrats, noticed for his leadership and speaking qualities.

In the early 2000s, after losing a power struggle to Ms. Merkel, Mr. Merz turned away from politics and started a career in corporate law, advising clients who wanted to establish their businesses in Germany. Mr. Merz served on multiple boards, including that of the American investment firm BlackRock, before returning to politics after Ms. Merkel announced her retirement.

During his election campaign, Mr. Merz tried tapping into a yearning for a time when Germany’s economy was booming, infrastructure was new and bureaucracy worked.

But challenges mounted for him, taking up much of his attention.

Despite finishing first in the February election, Mr. Merz’s options were limited because the party had performed poorly. He had only one plausible coalition partner, the Social Democrats, who had led the extremely unpopular previous government and registered a record low for their party in February.

To secure their votes for military spending and more, Mr. Merz handed an unusually large number of cabinet positions to his junior partner. He softened his plans on immigration, including his promise to reject asylum seekers at the border.

Mr. Merz has expressed hopes of forging a positive relationship with Mr. Trump, but allies say he has become increasingly disenchanted by a series of actions by the U.S. administration. Those included vows to pull back American troops in Europe and a speech by Vice President JD Vance in Munich in which he attacked Europeans on “free speech” and warned them to stop sidelining parties like the AfD.

Mr. Merz was also stunned by the dressing-down that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance gave Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president and a fellow ally, in the Oval Office. “In my opinion, this was not a spontaneous reaction to Zelensky’s statements, but rather an intentional escalation of tensions during the meeting in the Oval Office,” Mr. Merz said at the time.

Mr. Merz has increasingly pushed back against the Trump administration, warning Germans they must take responsibility for their own security. “Do you seriously believe that an American government will agree to continue NATO as before?” he asked lawmakers in March.

Even many of those who have criticized Mr. Merz’s leadership style have approved of his stance toward the United States.

“I believe that he truly understands how the global situation has changed and what is changing in the U.S.,” said Mr. Polenz, the former secretary general of Mr. Merz’s party. “He is a staunch supporter of trans-Atlantic relations and will certainly try to maintain and stabilize all relations between Germany, Europe and the U.S. as best he can. But he is under no illusions about the difficulty of the task ahead.”

Tatiana Firsova contributed reporting from Berlin.