Germany: Olaf Scholz officially succeeds Angela Merkel

For the third in the country's history since the end of the war, a social democrat, Olaf Scholz, becomes chancellor at the head of a coalition associating the SPD, environmentalists and liberals.

John MACDOUGALL AFP

Text by: Pascal Thibaut Follow

8 mins

Germany turns a page of history with the departure this Wednesday, December 8 after sixteen years of Angela Merkel.

For the third in the country's history since the end of the war, a social democrat, Olaf Scholz, becomes chancellor at the head of a coalition associating the SPD, environmentalists and liberals. 

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From our correspondent in Berlin,

When Lars Haider goes on vacation with his family after the elections on September 26, his diplomat brother-in-law asks the editor of the daily

 what books he can recommend to get to know the man who will become the new chancellor better. A brief search on the internet turns out to be unsuccessful. No book on Olaf Scholz has ever been written. The journalist from Hamburg, who worked closely with the future chancellor in the city where the latter grew up and which he led from 2011 to 2018, then immediately got to work. Lars Haider's book,

, comes out this week on the occasion of the election of the new Chancellor.

The anecdote is revealing. Olaf Scholz, 63, has a long political career behind him and yet his career has not inspired biographies and other works. Like Angela Merkel, for example, very little is known about her private life. The future chancellor was born in Osnabrück, in the west of Germany, on June 14, 1958, but he is a Hamburger at heart, a city where his parents, active in the textile industry, settle when he is a baby. He is the first in his family to study and to embody the meritocratic model championed by the Social Democratic Party. His two younger brothers follow suit. One now runs a hospital in northern Germany; the other a company active in new technologies. 

Olaf Scholz joined the SPD at 17. He always has his red party member's book with him in his satchel. Like many in the social democratic youth, he was very leftist in the 1980s and advocated "going

". At the beginning of 1984, he met with other officials of the social democratic youths high dignitaries of the East German communist regime. 

This commitment to the SPD is reflected first of all in his professional career. Unlike other politicians, Olaf Scholz first of all exercises "a real profession" and works as a lawyer. He often defends employees threatened by layoffs and after the reunification of works councils in the eastern part of the country whose companies must be dismantled and privatized. A task that he often mentioned during the last electoral campaign to highlight his social commitment as his knowledge of the field in the former GDR. 

Olaf Scholz's political career began with the coming to power of another Social Democrat, Gerhard Schröder, in 1998. The newly elected Bundestag took over the leadership of the SPD federation in Hamburg and joined the governing bodies of his party of which he will be the general secretary between 2002 and 2004. A large public then meets Olaf Scholz who defends the profound social reforms of Gerhard Schröder. It was at this time that he was nicknamed “Scholzomat”, an allusion to his way of repeating the same sentences over and over again like a robot. The future chancellor takes great pleasure in not answering journalists' questions or giving an answer that does not correspond to the question. And ends his interlocutors by responding with a concise "yes" or "no" to a question on a complex subject. 

This style but also the defense of the Schröder reforms and later his membership of the right wing of the SPD make Olaf Scholz the unloved one of the Social Democratic Party which during congresses regularly sanctions him with a mediocre score during the re-election. governing bodies. 

This also explains why it was not retained in 2005 when the first grand coalition government led by Angela Merkel was formed. But it was later alongside the Christian Democrat chancellor that Olaf Scholz obtained a national stature which would allow him on arrival to win the chancellery. He was Minister of Social Affairs between 2007 and 2009. Merkel did not initially appreciate his side as a lesson-giver. But their style brings them together: sobriety, no sleeve effect, a stripped down rhetoric, no lyrical accents, pragmatism above all and a formidable mastery of files during negotiations. Olaf Scholz with the Chancellor set up massive measures in favor of short-time working against the crisis that began in 2008, which on arrival allows Germany to avoid a significant increase in unemployment. 

When Olaf Scholz returned to business in Berlin in 2018 with the constitution of a new grand coalition government, he took over the finance portfolio and initially distinguished himself as the faithful heir to his predecessor, the great Christian treasurer. -Democrat Wolfgang Schäuble, follower of budgetary rigor. A position which, once again, makes Olaf Scholz the pet peeve of the left wing of the SPD which has accepted a new grand coalition by gritting its teeth. The success of the new minister as mayor of Hamburg between 2011 and 2018 with scores to make his party dream, the massive construction of housing or free nurseries are not enough to convince the base of the SPD. When in 2019, Olaf Scholz participated in the primary for the leadership of his party, he suffered a stinging failure.He certainly qualifies with his team-mate for the second round, but he is beaten by a duo more to the left supported by the social democratic youth. Like the massive violence during the G20 in Hamburg in 2017 which tarnishes Scholz's image, he rebounds in adversity, where others would pass the hand. 

A few months after his failure to take the leadership of the SPD, the new Olaf Scholz takes off. With the pandemic, the Minister of Finance, champion of budgetary stability, takes out his bazooka and spends billions to support the German economy. It contributes with Paris to the launch and success of the European recovery plan in spring 2020; Germany breaks a taboo and accepts common debts from the EU. He is committed to a tax on financial transactions and is achieving success at the G20 this year with an agreement on minimum tax rates for multinationals. 

These measures but also the absence of another candidate with the same competence and scope led the SPD to appoint him, very early, in the summer of 2020 as a candidate for the chancellery. Some are ironic in view of the dramatic polls: do the Social Democrats need a candidate for the Chancellery? The Greens see their scores soar over time. A duel between the conservatives and the ecologists then appears to be the only credible option. The SPD, before the summer, does not take off and is credited with 15% in the polls. The cartoonists shoot at the ambulance; others almost feel pity. 

Olaf Scholz believes in it. He has put in place a long-term strategy. Assert himself in his post as Minister of Finance from where he has an overview of the government machine. It is also forging an international stature in Europe and beyond. He is convinced that in the home stretch, when the Germans realize that the Eternal Chancellor takes over, the situation will change. The Christian Democrats will lose the bonus linked to Angela Merkel's person. The candidate they have chosen for themselves does not convince. Olaf Scholz by his style and his mode of government is the perfect successor to the Chancellor. He forces the line, is photographed by taking the famous pose prized by Angela Merkel holding her hands in the shape of a diamond. An SPD poster proclaims about Olaf Scholz "He can be chancellor".  

The bet will work, even beyond what the interested party hoped since his party ends on September 26 in the lead. The Christian Democrats are raking in a historic debacle. The Greens are certainly progressing compared to 2017, but their historic surge in the polls in the spring is falling like a breath. A coalition between the SPD, environmentalists and liberals is possible and allows the election on Wednesday of Olaf Scholz. 

If the parallels with Angela Merkel in style are striking, Olaf Scholz is not a clone of the Chancellor social democratic version. Her predecessor was often more of a moderator; Scholz, who was called in Hamburg "King Olaf", leads his teams with an iron fist and demands exemplary discipline. The bickering within the coalition must be resolved behind the scenes and not in the media. The frustration of German journalists during the negotiations of the last few weeks illustrated this new way of doing things. And if Olaf Scholz is a pragmatist like Angela Merkel, he intends, more than the outgoing Chancellor, to act and not only to react; he wants with his new coalition to present a project of modernization of the country for the current decade rather than a professional management,but without major reform of the inevitable crises. 

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