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At first it looked as if the Merkel era should be shelved.
As if the CDU wanted to return to its glorious origins with the election of its new chairman.
Back to those times when Konrad Adenauer even managed to lead the CDU to an absolute majority in the western state.
And back to the Catholic-Rhenish abundance that Armin Laschet, who is almost always cheerful, sometimes penetratingly cheerful, embodies like no other politician.
Back to the future, in a way.
But that's not how it will turn out.
The outgoing Angela Merkel, the predecessor of the new party leader, grew up in Templin in the Uckermark region.
Laschet is through and through and programmatically a citizen of Aachen, the western imperial city in the border triangle near France.
There are 700 kilometers between the self-confident stronghold of Catholicism, the carnival and a sometimes somewhat exalted European euphoria and the barren town on Prussian soil, which is not even half as old as Aachen.
And almost a world.
The differences are almost too obvious.
Merkel became a politician late on, and it wasn't imperative that she would join the CDU one day.
Laschet was born into the party in Aachen - a CDU stronghold for decades.
18 years old, he joined her.
While Merkel first had to learn about the Federal Republic and felt her way forward in a politically recognizable way, in the world of Laschets, born in 1961, it was inconceivable to go a different political path than the Christian-democratic one.
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Altar boy, collaboration in the parish, in the church choir: Laschet grew up in a sheltered, self-contained biotope, everything was safe.
The world ended beyond the church and the CDU.
The party that set the tone here was a strict party of dignitaries, politics was always made in the shadow of the cathedral.
Everyone knew everyone, a network of institutions interwoven church and party.
Laschet's later father-in-law was a manager, headed the Catholic diocese publisher Einhard and the Aachener “Kirchenzeitung”, whose editor-in-chief was later to be conveniently the son-in-law Armin.
The brother of the father-in-law held the office of mayor of the city for many years.
One slipped into the other.
Relationships pave the way from youth on Laschet's path.
That was really still the old Catholic world, in which one could serve church and state equally with impunity and combine both in a career-promoting way.
In which you helped yourself.
And in which no one who took part had to fear falling into nothing.
A Catholic patriarchate with a socio-political tint: the sheep that are not rebellious should be fine.
If you research Laschet's early life, you quickly think you're in a novel by Heinrich Böll: larger than life the church, larger than life the dignitaries, a lot of clergy, a lot of chutzpah and shrewdness.
As well as a lot of double standards.
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In this world the young Laschet moved like a fish in water, always right in the middle.
He benefits from her until today.
His family embodied and embodies the promise that once drove the CDU to the voters: modest prosperity, but above all advancement is possible.
Laschet's father was a Steiger and at the end of his working life the principal of an elementary school.
And Armin Laschet married into one of the most respected families in Aachen, the Malangrés.
Laschet's surprises
If that were all, then Laschet's election as CDU chairman could indeed be read as a signal that the party now wants to orientate itself back to the good old days, for which Adenauer and - even more - Kohl stand.
So: rather bad compromises than confrontation.
The effort to sell every change as continuity.
As few experiments as possible and the bathroom at a pleasant standstill.
Better to keep the good of today than to push open the door to an uncertain tomorrow.
That's how Friedrich Merz's supporters see it: Laschet is the guarantee that a lot will remain in Merkelian continuity.
That the citizens - apart from Corona - are not challenged.
That an unwavering party or government board of directors will seamlessly continue the de-politicization of politics.
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However, there is some evidence that it does not have to be that way.
And that has a lot to do with the person Armin Laschet.
And precisely because of the apparent lack of commitment and vagueness that he is often accused of.
Eternal moderator, mere mediator, a lot of wind, little income and "wobbly" (SPD election advertising): To many Laschet seems at best a hallodri, sympathetic, but not goal-oriented.
And indeed, if you look at his extensive journalistic work and his political deeds, little that is sharp, unique and unforgettable will catch your eye.
An Aachen CDU politician who once pushed the young Laschet politically, later said of him: “Armin always tried to keep a balance.” That's right, it sounds like the infamous middle ground.
Armin Laschet as North Rhine-Westphalia's generation minister in 2005
Source: picture-alliance / dpa / dpaweb
But it can also lead elsewhere.
Like the young Helmut Kohl once, Laschet tried early to modernize the self-satisfied and senior-encrusted CDU.
While Kohl acted impetuously and did not shy away from brutalities, Laschet did it in a completely different way as Aachen councilor.
Always active, approaching friends and opponents, Laschet was something of a gentle reformer.
He liberalized the CDU in Aachen, but managed to offend (almost) no one in the process: Reform without leaving behind ruins and feelings of hatred.
Laschet early stood for a liberal big city CDU, which at the same time does not want to leave its traditional cohorts behind.
As Minister of Integration of North Rhine-Westphalia, he decisively changed his party's course on the issue of foreigners and integration, and thus not only impressed Navid Kermani.
Yet he is not an “understanding” of the Turks and Turkey: He is making a front against parallel worlds, with which he shows himself as a defensive democrat in the old CDU tradition.
And he has always vehemently rejected Turkey's accession to the EU - which goes well with the Carolingian tradition of his hometown.
He does not avoid conflicts with bishops, but does not believe in same-sex marriage.
Retaining critics
Another property of Laschet could be even more decisive.
It becomes clear when you compare his Düsseldorf style of government with that of Angela Merkel.
The Chancellor has gathered a small but firm group around her: not yes-men, but absolute followers.
This circle is the opaque heart chamber of power - the parliament, the cabinet and the citizens have felt it.
The political sphere experienced a period of drought.
The new Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia took a completely different approach in 2017.
You could say: his motto was not unity, but diversity.
He is not sitting like a black spider over his power cosmos.
He doesn't seem to be afraid of contradiction either.
The liberal and not very strict Laschet has chosen the arch-Catholic and arch-conservative Nathanael Liminski, whose family of origin is no stranger to the ultra-conservative, mysterious Catholic organization Opus Dei, as office manager.
The two, it is said, work together very well, although there are some ideological differences between them.
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Laschet always does it this way: he does not excommunicate opponents, competitors, dissidents, as Kohl did.
He offers them a place in his system.
Not only to “involve” them, ie to neutralize them, but also to have the dissent at the table.
One could learn from it.
Such a team is perhaps more agile and responsive than a tightly-knit force.
In his personnel policy, Laschet plays with several strangers.
That may be an advantage at a time when much is uncertain.
You shouldn't be fooled by Laschet's sociable sociability.
He can switch to hard, he is also quite cunning.
When Merkel demonstratively put the debt brake on the agenda through her Chancellery Minister, he understood immediately that an example should be made here: After his election, the new party leader should be relegated to the second row immediately.
Laschet waited, as he always does, a few breaths - and then said relatively straightforward: njet.
Merkel could also do politics in a hut or in the potato field.
Everything that has to do with the representation of the state was always recognizable annoying to her, it just keeps her from working.
If you want, a piece of the GDR survived in Berlin's government district.
Laschet is completely different.
He represents visibly with joy.
Celebration hours are not mandatory for him, but pleasure dates.
He wants the state to do something.
That, too, could be helpful at a time when it has become a popular sport to denigrate politics as a job for failure.
And in which the Federal President threatens to become an adviser uncle.
As Prime Minister of the largest, very western federal state, Laschet also has a healthy self-confidence: He does not stare at the capital of the “Berlin Republic”, but neither does he suffer from the Berlin phobia of federalist nostalgics.
No other politician in the front row carries - perhaps apart from Hesse's Volker Bouffier (CDU) - as much “Bonn Republic” as Laschet.
That would be a disadvantage, for example, if he insisted too much on the Franco-German alliance, which has fallen out of time despite and because of Macron.
However, its roots in the spirit of the “Bonn Republic” could also be an advantage.
Laschet is, right down to genetic engineering, an avid friend of progress.
In doing so, he continues the lines of the CDU of the 50s and 60s - something that the so-called middle of society likes and could benefit the economy.
And certainly not badly received in the East.
Just like, unfortunately, his all too understanding dealings with Russia and Putin's plebiscitarian dictatorship.
There he continues the bad tradition of that old CDU, which Franco's Spain once gladly accepted because it seemed to stand for the “Christian Occident”.
Merkel let the CDU starve to death on the long arm, disregarded the party's conventional self-image and alienated the members from the CDU traditions in the name of supposedly iron necessities.
But it has not created a new self-image that could make the CDU a kind of new home.
With Armin Laschet that could well change.