Sixteen years of Angela Merkel have changed the country.
For better or for worse.
As with all chancellors.
She challenged her party as well as Helmut Schmidt and Gerhard Schröder challenged the SPD.
To govern means to put the country before the party.
Merkel has committed herself to this with absolute clarity, with the collateral damage that the CDU is in a deep identity crisis.
The three candidates that the delegates will be able to choose from on Saturday have at least partially illuminated the party's discursively darkened room in recent weeks. It has refreshed the CDU and with it the political culture of the country, because the Union is the last people's party in the classic sense.