Modernization call it those who probably mean it with Angela Merkel. Their critics, on the other hand, speak of the left-wing approach, and a "social democratization" of the CDU is also diagnosed with regularity.

Friedrich Merz, who wants to inherit Merkel as well as Annegret Kamp-Karrenbauer and Jens Spahn at the Hamburg CDU party congress on this Friday, warned recently: "We do not have to take over all positions that the Social Democrats find right," he shouted Party base at the CDU regional conference in Böblingen too.

There was loud applause.

Angela Merkel has changed the CDU, that much is clear.

Even her coronation as party leader in April 2000 was a revolution: A woman from the East, Protestant, takes over the West German-dominated, mostly Catholic male association. That was probably only possible because the CDU at the time threatened to sink into the donation sump. Because Merkel, the outsider, was unloaded.

At the party congress in Essen's Grugahalle, Hans Filbinger, who had to resign as Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg in 1978, spoke immediately before her election because, as a naval judge, he had issued death sentences against deserters towards the end of the Second World War. Filbinger railed in Essen against the admission of homosexual civil partnerships, against the right of abortion, the alleged "historical clutter" in textbooks on the Third Reich.

He got applause for his comments.

That too was the CDU that Merkel took over 18 years ago.

Some of the old guard still believed in a transitional solution Merkel. But the chairwoman had come to stay. Her male adversaries gradually got rid of Merkel. Or they went voluntarily. In 2005, Merkel won the chancellorship, in the next three general elections, she prevailed against her SPD challenger.

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Merkel's withdrawal from the CDU chairmanship: written in the face

Angela Merkel has led the Christian Democrats for nearly two decades, only Helmut Kohl surpasses her with 25 years at the head of the CDU. Chancellor wants to stay her until the end of the legislature. In order to understand how much Merkel and her party have changed in this long time - the SPD meanwhile consumed seven chairmen - it is worth looking back to the Essen party convention in 2000.

In her application speech Merkel said sentences like these:

"We are in favor of maintaining conscription."

"The exit from nuclear energy - this happens even though we have the safest nuclear power plants in the world - stands for this really impossible policy."

"... ... legal equality of same-sex partnerships - these are all projects that are not majority-eligible in Germany - because they are half-baked, we have to fight against it."

Today, conscription has long since been suspended, the phasing out of nuclear power is underway, same-sex civil partnerships are legally equated to traditional marriage. These are examples that are often used when describing the softening of the conservative brand core of the CDU in the Merkel era.

It is precisely on these three policy areas that one can not even speak of a sophisticated modernization strategy of the boss.

The conscription idea came from the then CSU Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. The nuclear power-off was preceded by a lifetime extension for the German Meiler, which was collected after the Fukushima Gau. And the way for the equality of the gay marriage Merkel probably did not release completely planned, as she demanded in the summer of 2017 in conspiratorial sentences in a "Bunte" -Talk the lifting of parliamentary group responsibility.

Nevertheless, it is precisely these fields that Merkel's greatest critics, meanwhile since 2017, especially in the so-called value union organized, hold it up. Again and again they were a topic at regional conferences.

Merkel's real concern

The situation was different in women's and family policy : Here, Merkel initiated the dedusting of the party in her time as secretary-general, to which she had been elected after the lost federal election in 1998. Merkel brought with her a different view of the family than the Kohl CDU, probably because of her socialization in the GDR - and her party's recognition of patchwork families and working mothers.

Consequently, Merkel, as Chancellor Ursula von der Leyen, became a family and later a Minister of Labor: parental allowance, day care, women's quota - von der Leyen was whirling around, the backing of the chairwoman and chancellor was certain.

Competition for CDU chairmanshipThe moving party

The introduction of the minimum wage , also deplored by the Merkel critics as a partial sale of the regulatory CDU silverware, probably shows most of the policy style of Merkel: Long was against the minimum wage, but finally let it convince of its economic sense - and the specialist politicians Their party for the election campaign in 2013 to develop their own concept.

Thus, on the one hand, it took the wind out of the sails of the Social Democrats during the election campaign, but above all after the election had no problems agreeing with the comrades in the coalition on a corresponding regulation.

With the minimum wage, Chancellor Merkel had finally deposed by the early party leader Merkel: namely, that tried even culminating at the federal party convention in 2003 in Leipzig, the CDU miss a market radical program - keyword health premium. As a candidate for chancellor, she almost failed to vote for the 2005 Bundestag election, in which SPD incumbent Gerhard Schröder ended up only slightly behind the Union despite his seemingly hopeless backlog in the polls with his party.

Last only values ​​around 30 percent

Merkel's conclusion: Stay away from radical reforms - unless they are from higher circumstances, such as the nuclear phase out, commanded and therefore opportune in large parts of the population, or just economically correct and strategically useful as the minimum wage. That is probably the reason why Merkel has never fulfilled in climate policy , what she pretended in the first grand coalition as alleged climate chancellor.

But how is it then that the CDU has lost in the 18 years since Merkel's election to the party leadership about 200,000 and thus a third of its members and in state and parliamentary elections last only reached values ​​around 30 percent?

From the point of view of the "value union" or the "Berlin circle" of conservative Union member of parliament the answer is clear: because Merkel has eroded the CDU brand core.

Of course, it's not that easy. With an average age of the CDU members of about 60 years, and rising, part of the base just goes away every year.

Vote # 76 - 13 years Chancellor Merkel: How has Germany changed since then?

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And then of course there is the refugee policy of Merkel and with it the strengthening of the AfD, which initially emerged as a Euro-critical party in the wake of the currency crisis.

Merkel left the borders open in refugee summer 2015. And because hundreds of thousands have come in the aftermath, Merkel's criticism is still regarded as a fall of sin. In the CDU, they also accuse Merkel that they did not include the party in their decisions at that time.

The refugee issue is as virulent in the CDU as no other

Whether she was thinking of her image in future history books, so decided by humanitarian conviction, or driven by the fear of the images of desperate refugees in front of closed German borders - nothing has damaged Angela Merkel as chairman in her own party. No other topic is discussed so emotionally in the CDU until today, which was also reflected in the regional conferences.

The refugee policy, that is the fear in the CDU, could linger on the party for as long as the SPD Schröder's agenda reforms. It will be all the more exciting to see how Merkel's successor or successor deals with this legacy. Because the matter is also so complicated because just the opposite is true: The outgoing party leader continues to enjoy a large part of the members because of their attitude in the refugee crisis.

So did Merkel really gut the CDU in the end?

Your answer should be clear. And one could actually have read it out in Merkel's application speech at the Essen party congress in April 2000.

At that time she said:

"Dear friends, I was delighted that there has been much debate in recent weeks about what is conservative, and one who participated in the debate rightly wrote for me: 'Conservative is not about preservation The future can be recognized by the courage to change. ' To accept reality, to be capable of renewal and at the same time to preserve value - that is conservative. "


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