It's hard to become CDU leader, but even harder to be CDU leader.

You no longer fight for yourself, but for everyone, which is why everyone has a say.

And in the case of Friedrich Merz, they talk a lot.

Friederike Haupt

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Merz is the first CDU chairman to be elected by the members.

The little ones made him big.

They are proud of that.

Before that happened, Merz complained that the big ones in the party wanted to prevent him.

He spoke of the “Berlin establishment” as if the mustiness of a thousand years was building up in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus.

Now he is sitting there himself.

Merz must manage to win the big ones without losing the small ones, and in such a way that the CDU not only likes itself, but also more voters again.

So squaring the circle.

The question arises: How does Merz go about it, and does it work?

Deliberately at the snack machine

What's pretty clear is that he needs to change a few things he's known for and a few right now.

As for the changes, one thing is obvious: Merz has new glasses.

It doesn't sound like much at first, but it isn't.

Because people talk about it.

Also in the CDU.

The glasses somehow make him more pleasing, they say, he chose them with his wife and got a thousand compliments on how well they suit him, and that pleases him, and it makes him appear more approachable.

The glasses are elegant blue and distinctive, but not too distinctive, they could belong to a Volvo driver, or a music teacher, a man who sometimes dances at parties without caring what it looks like, and who, when he gets hungry in between, pulls a Mars or Bounty from a vending machine for eighty cents.

Interestingly, Merz just danced at the Union faction's summer party and pondered in front of a sweets machine which snack to get.

Pictures of it came into the world in a very targeted manner, via Merz's Instagram account.

In other words, he wants people to see him that way, approachable, relaxed.

So many don't know him.

At the same time, he avoids the kind of sentences with which he often polarized in the past: against Merkel, against gender asterisks, against Berlin, where too little is known about how normal people think.

"He is weighing more," says one of the CDU leadership and means it appreciatively.

This is also noticeable to others.

Some of those who were against him are pleasantly surprised.

He reacts differently to contradiction than expected, gives in sometimes, learns from it.

Contrite after Baerbock blunder

As an example, several MEPs cite an incident from March.

Merz had clashed with Annalena Baerbock in the Bundestag.

In his speech, Merz said that the government would be happy to make feminist foreign policy, but not with the money that was intended for the Bundeswehr.

When it was the foreign minister's turn, she launched a counterattack.

"It breaks my heart," she began, whereupon Merz put his hand on his heart in ironic dismay.

That seemed scornful to many, especially since Baerbock then explained quite emphatically what she was about, namely, for example, to realize that rape is used strategically as a weapon in war.