Alexander Clarkson is a lecturer in European studies at King’s College London.
It could all have been so different.
A little over a year ago, it seemed Angela Merkel had pulled it off again. The German chancellor had headed off an internal crisis within her Christian Democrats, outmaneuvered conservative factions that sought to replace her as party leader and engineered the rise of a close ally poised to take over as chancellor in 2021.
In typical Merkel fashion, she had won the upper hand in bruising factional battles within the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, by pushing aside an old rival — Friedrich Merz, who made a spectacular return after 15 years in the political wilderness — and placating challengers gathered behind an up-and-coming minister, Jens Spahn.
In Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, her chosen successor, Merkel found someone who would protect her legacy and prevent any further drift to the right — something she worried would alienate the CDU’s moderate base, encouraging those voters to turn to the Greens, whose star was on the rise.
In misjudging the timing of her exit, Merkel has put her party’s dominant role in German politics at risk.
That plan has now fallen apart — in dramatic fashion.
The political crisis in the eastern German state of Thuringia — where regional CDU figures agreed to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany to prevent a left-leaning government in the region — broke a long-standing taboo and demonstrated just how far the authority of the national CDU leadership under Kramp-Karrenbauer had collapsed.
That Merkel was forced to step in and steady the ship showed just how badly she mismanaged the transition of power.
The situation is particularly ironic given that Merkel’s mistakes echo those made by her predecessor as chancellor, Helmut Kohl, whose demise enabled her own rise to the top.
Merkel, left, with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer at the Bundestag | Clemens Bilan/EPA
In the aftermath of elections in 1994, Kohl worked to boost the profile of his CDU colleague Wolfgang Schäuble — now the German Bundestag president — within the party and claimed he would eventually hand over the leadership to him. Yet as his final parliamentary term dragged on, Kohl became less willing to leave, causing deep frustration within party factions close to Schäuble, who was then leader of the CDU/CSU in the parliament.
Tensions escalated in the buildup to the 1998 elections after Kohl decided to stand again rather than allow Schäuble to take his place. The CDU/CSU went on to lose those elections, and Kohl was finally brought down two years later when, seriously weakened by his role in party funding scandals, an Eastern German politician whose career the former chancellor had fostered shoved Schäuble aside and rallied support among the membership for a complete renewal of the party’s leadership.
That same Eastern German politician is now making many of the same missteps that unraveled her one-time mentor’s succession plans.
Merkel’s decision to remain in office as chancellor until elections in 2021 made it impossible for Kramp-Karrenbauer to consolidate her own power base. CDU politicians struggled to balance loyalty to a new CDU leader with the need to keep a line to the old CDU leader and current chancellor. The situation undermined Kramp-Karrenbauer’s authority in the party and government — and also helped blow a succession of gaffes out of proportion and weaken her hand further.
The task of reforming the German military — something Merkel had hoped would help Kramp-Karrenbauer boost her profile — also proved a poisoned chalice, distracting the CDU leader from the basic party management that could have helped her head off infighting.
What happened in Thuringia was less the primary cause of the CDU leader’s downfall than the symptom of an untenable situation orchestrated by Merkel.
Even a clever tactician like CSU leader Markus Söder will struggle in an election if his partners in the CDU are wracked by infighting.
Kramp-Karrenbauer lacked the authority to discipline CDU members and was unable to sustain a party-wide consensus against cooperating with either the far-left Die Linke or the far-right AfD. With local CDU figures in dialogue with Die Linke on a district level in Brandenburg and tacit cooperation between parts of the CDU and the AfD on the regional level in Thuringia, rival factions within the party found themselves pursuing contradictory approaches to governing in an increasingly fragmented political landscape.
In misjudging the timing of her exit, Merkel has put her party’s dominant role in German politics at risk.
Each of her potential successors within the CDU will struggle to reach out beyond their own faction and unite the party. With the CDU weakened, its sister party in Bavaria the CSU could make a claim to put forward the alliance’s next candidate for the chancellery. But even a clever tactician like CSU leader Markus Söder will struggle in an election if his partners in the CDU are wracked by infighting.
We may yet see history repeat itself again. It looks increasingly likely that Merkel will see her long reign ended by a resounding electoral victory by a coalition of the left spearheaded by exuberant Greens — just as Kohl did more than 20 years ago.