[ad_1]
Friedrich Merz's campaign to succeed Angela Merkel went well – until the millionaire corporate lawyer claimed he was a member of the German middle class.
"The middle class, my ass!", Said the Heute Show, a satirical show of news on German television. To illustrate his point, he showed an image of Mr. Merz wearing a rapper style gold chain with the caption: "Merz-edes Bonz", a play on the German word "fat cat".
"My general rule is that if you own more than one plane, you're probably not from the middle class," said host Oliver Welke. Mr. Merz has two.
Emeritus lawyer and chairman of the board of directors of BlackRock Germany, Merz is one of three candidates vying to succeed the German Chancellor at the head of the right-wing Christian Democrat Union. . Campaigning on a platform of public order, national identity and traditional values, it proved to be a success with conservatives disappointed by the drift to the left of the CDU led by Merkel.
Two weeks before the CDU conference in Hamburg, which will elect its new leader, Merz and Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, secretary general of the party, compete for first place in the polls. Jens Spahn, the Minister of Health, is third.
But questions about Mr Merz's wealth are beginning to hurt his campaign. Few Germans entered politics after a successful career in the private sector and voters are generally skeptical of millionaires seeking public office.
"None of the chancellors who have ruled Germany since the Second World War were rich, they all lived modestly," said Gerhard Bosch, a professor of sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Ms. Merkel herself is generally discreet. She makes her own purchases in a small supermarket in the center of Berlin, spends a short vacation on foot and has already given the Bunte women's magazine her potato soup recipe.
Some members of the CDU also worry that the election of a person as wealthy as Mr Merz, while the inequality rises in Germany, could strengthen the protest parties to right and left. The far right alternative for Germany is already represented in the 16 regional parliaments and is the largest opposition party of the Bundestag.
Former Merkel rival who left politics in 2009 to embark on business, Mr Merz, who admits to earning 1 million euros a year, is richer than the average German politician. For his work as a member of the board of directors, he receives 125,000 euros per year from BlackRock, 75,000 euros from HSBC Trinkaus, 80,000 euros from the bathroom tissue manufacturer Wepa and 14,000 euros from the company. Cologne-Bonn Airport.
Yet, in a now notorious interview with the big-print newspaper Bild Zeitung last week, he said he did not consider himself a top class, but as a "upper middle class".
The reaction was disbelief. "He was clearly trying to tell the voters," I am one of you, "Bosch said." But people immediately understood him and felt that he was only trying to get himself to please them. "Mr. Merz's income, said Mr. Bosch, puts him in the" 1% of the best Germans ".
advisable
A few days later, Mr. Merz was found attacked at the popular talk show of Anne Will Sunday. "You have made a lot of money," said Manuela Schwesig, a senior social democrat. "But can you really understand people's daily concerns?"
Mr. Merz said that he can. He and his wife live in the small town of Brilon, in western Germany, for decades. "This is our house, our children have grown up there," he told Bild. "I think I know what kind of problems and difficulties people have."
He continued to insist that he was bourgeois despite his wealth. "I inherited from my parents the values that characterize the middle class," he said. "Among them, discipline, hard work, decency, respect and the idea of returning something back to society – if you can afford it."
Friends and colleagues emphasize his modesty. "Merz may be rich, but he does not throw his money," said a partner. "He is not like an oligarch who boasts of his yachts and planes all the time. He is actually very down-to-earth. "
Merz also received significant support from his Conservative colleagues. "It has always irritated me, this negative attitude that we have in Germany towards the best performers," said Sylvia Pantel, member of the CDU. "I think it's commendable that someone who has been successful in business now states that he wants to do something for his country and his party."
But others think Mr Merz is deceiving himself if he believes that the Germans will one day have the same relaxed vision of millionaire politicians as the Americans.
"[Germans] just do not really trust very rich people or big companies, "Thomas Druyen, a sociologist at Sigmund Freud University in Vienna, told German radio. "It's absurd, of course, but it's part of our psychological DNA."
