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At the first meeting of the "German Islam Conference" in 2006, the Union-led Ministry of the Interior served ham sandwiches. So pork. No idea if that was moody recklessness or ignorance. I think it is quite possible that twelve years ago no one in the CDU knew a Muslim or a Muslim, let alone their eating habits. It's different today.

At some point under Angela Dorothea Merkel, the CDU has realized that it must open to minorities. The party leader wanted that not only Russian Germans in the Union find again. And she did it.

For the younger ones among us: migrants in the Union, that was revolutionary! The CDU has always been the anti-foreigner party. Almost every speech by Union politicians made it clear that migrants are a problem. You are not one of them. The message to people like my parents: First learn German. And how to eat with a knife and fork.

The Christian Democratic Union behaved like an elephant in the china shop when it comes to immigration. Well, like the CSU today.

But Merkel civilized her party. She taught the CDU manners towards the "foreign fellow citizens". And set new messages: It was not an SPD Chancellor, but Angela Merkel, the integration declared "top priority". And it is she who invites immigrant associations to the chancellery for more than ten years. In 2015, she was also the first Federal Chancellor to hold a ceremony for guest workers to pay tribute to her achievements.

Two thousand fifteen! This was not really expected.

What has surprised me in all these years: The CDU woman always hits the right note. She succeeds as the first Federal Chancellor not to exclude the citizens of the Migration Checkmark in their speeches. This is not possible for the vast majority of politicians - not even among the SPD, the Greens and the Left.

Merkel, the mother of all solutions

I do not believe that Merkel acts out of charity. Their political decisions are too ruthless. It is rather the Bismarck of integration policy: carrot and stick. Under her crass asylum tightening decided, naturalization was deterrent complicated and anti-discrimination policy is still the Cinderella in the budget.

But Merkel is not only pragmatic, she is also a politician with vision. And the number of voters with a migration background is growing. For the first time in 2017, more than ten percent of all voters were Mihigrus . If you want to remain a people's party, you have to be sexy for Germans with a migration bonus.

Voice # 72 - Merkel's retreat plan and who can torpedo him

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The Social Democrats saw that easily. They apparently considered it a natural law that migrants choose the SPD. Clever Merkel, on the other hand, thought: Would not it be laughable if the SPD could not be tempted by the conservative Turks, Jugos and Italians? And that's exactly how it happened. More recently, the Union has been in the favor of migrants and their descendants, as a recent study showed. Their attractiveness to Turkic Germans has risen especially - and this only because of "Anjela Märköl". The mother of all solutions.

Merkel certainly was not surprised. She worked on it for years. The highlight of her diversity campaign came four years ago: in 2014, she invited an illustrious company to the Konrad Adenauer Haus. Black people, Roma, Jews, women with headscarves united with party officials in the control center of Christian Democracy. Of course there was pig Wienerle, tradition is tradition.

Merkel: first Federal Chancellor with a migration background

The title of the event sounded like a compromise with the hardliners: Zugewandert - Arrived ?! Because it is an unspoken law in the CDU, that one should not say immigrants or immigration country , but only immigrants and immigration country . Very important: not one , only to ! But Merkel herself is the sausage, she constantly uttered the forbidden words.

At the immigrant party in the Union headquarters, she told of the hurdles that she herself had to take in the CDU. Some of her party colleagues would not have trusted her, the East German woman, that she knows the rules.

Once she had to read in the newspaper that someone had called her a "zone quail". "You should not be deterred by small adversities," she advised the migrants and new Germans, from minority to minority.

Incidentally, Merkel is one of the people to whom the term "with a migration background" fits perfectly. Because while most Mihigrus have more of a migration foreground , one can not recognize the Merkel. But her father's name was Horst Kazmierczak, before he had his name cleared in Kasner. Later, Merkel adopted her husband's last name.

That's a pity. Chancellor Kazmierczak, first wife and Chancellor with a migration background. I would have liked it.