On August 29th, Markus Söder was supposed to give a few short answers in the ARD summer interview.

With a view to his disputes about the CSU chairmanship and the office of the Bavarian Prime Minister on the one hand, on the candidate for chancellor on the other hand, he was asked: "Who was the tougher rival: Seehofer or Laschet?" Söder said only one word: "Schäuble." That stood for a fundamental conflict that will accompany the Union more than ever.

Eckart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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Rudiger Soldt

Political correspondent in Baden-Württemberg.

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Since the night of April 18 to 19, the now 79-year-old Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble Söder has been the main reason why he did not become a candidate for chancellor and that the Union lost the election. At that time, Laschet and Söder each met with a small delegation for the now legendary night session in the Reichstag, in which it was to be clarified who would be the candidate. Söder could not prevail. Immediately afterwards, the CSU tried to take over the interpretative sovereignty. Schäuble's role was presented as essential for the decision against Söder.

It is somewhat indisputable that Schäuble was the first to speak. But there are already different representations of whether he was asked to do so or opened up on his own initiative. In any case, he reaffirmed the conviction he had already expressed on another occasion that if Söder left the candidacy to Laschet, it would not do him or the CSU any harm. If it were the other way around, not only would Laschet, who was elected CDU chairman just a few months earlier, be damaged, but the CDU.

CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak had asked Schäuble to be there. The meeting took place at the so-called presidential level, not far from Schäuble's office. The parliamentary group hall of the CDU and CSU would have been the more neutral place. For the late evening entertainment there was only mineral water, the mouth and nose protection could be removed. Both Laschet and Söder made their claim to run for candidates offensively clear. When they separated in the early hours of the morning, there had been no agreement, the CDU did not know how Söder would react to Laschet's insistence the next day.

As is well known, Söder held up his arms. Defeat isn't exactly his favorite discipline. Even when the election was lost, Söder showed that his anger at Schäuble has not yet subsided. In a speech on the 80th birthday of the former CSU boss Edmund Stoiber, the CSU chairman gave Schäuble complicity in the fact that Stoiber did not win the 2002 federal election. Schäuble pushed the Union too close to the position of the American government in the dispute over the Iraq war. Some people make mistakes again and again, was Söder's comment.

Söder has shown often enough that he feels superior to Laschet.

His fixation on Schäuble could be due to the fact that he considers a defeat against the great old man of the Union, who has sat longer in the Bundestag than anyone else who has already fought for power with Kohl and Merkel, to be more bearable than a defeat against Lash.

But there is more to it than that.

After severe defeats, parties often react according to a similar pattern.

Once the initial shock has been overcome, the search for the causes and the culprits begins.

Now, two weeks after the general election, the Union has finally reached this point.

The gloves are taken off, the blows get harder.