CDU in Berlin | The world capital of Friedrich Merz

The only thing that helps is prayer: Stefan Evers (l.) wants to become mayor, Friedrich Merz (r.) hopes that it will work. Photo: dpa/Michael Kappeler Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) says: “We are often modest and rightly so.” However, this is not a prominent character trait for him personally. He also says: "But sometimes we make ourselves a little too small." Merz said this on Thursday evening in the Konrad-Adenauer-Haus, where he was campaigning for Finance Senator Stefan Evers, the CDU's top candidate for the Berlin House of Representatives election on September 20th.

»We are a world cultural city. “Berlin radiates out into the world,” enthuses Merz, as if he had never made any derogatory comments about the cityscape. Berlin is the capital of artificial intelligence and start-ups and is more attractive to young people than any other city in Germany. The Chancellor, whose radius of movement in Berlin is currently essentially limited to the Mitte district, sings such praises in the Adenauer House.

Meanwhile, less than a kilometer away on Kurfürstenstrasse: a few drug addicts are injecting themselves with heroin in public, and prostitutes, in their distress, are offering sex for a few euros. Berlin, like many other metropolises in the world, is a city of stark contrasts: luxury apartments with underground parking and homeless people on the sidewalk in front of them. But since 2023, the CDU has been the governing mayor. Suddenly it's important to emphasize the advantages and ignore the misery with silence.

When looking at the Federal Republic, a similar loss of reality becomes evident. Germany is being looked at and something is expected from Germany, the Chancellor proudly describes. The country has long felt comfortable with cheap Chinese products, cheap Russian oil and protected by the USA. But this business model is over, and it is also an opportunity and “overdue” for Germany to protect itself. Freedom in Europe must be defended and regained where it was lost.

In Berlin, Friedrich Merz occasionally takes the S-Bahn, even if it worries his bodyguards, as he suggests. Merz then gets off the S-Bahn at Pariser Platz, walks through the Brandenburg Gate and is happy that this has been possible again since 1989. “I experienced it differently.” When the young Friedrich Merz first visited Berlin, the wall that separated West Berlin from the GDR was still standing. On the way to the Chancellery, Merz likes to take a detour to the place where US President Ronald Reagan proclaimed in 1987: "Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Merz swaps the word order when quoting and says: "Tear this wall down!" It doesn't change the meaning of the demand: the Soviet state and party leader Mikhail Gorbachev should tear down the wall at the time. The GDR actually opened it in 1989 under pressure from its dissatisfied population.

Germany could have been reunified much earlier if it had accepted Josef Stalin's condition in 1952 that it would adopt a neutral position in the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the USA, as did Austria. Friedrich Merz recalls the negative answer of the then Chancellor Kondrad Adenauer (CDU): "I choose freedom." However, Adenauer's attitude is better described with the formulation: "I'd rather have half of Germany as a whole than half of all of Germany." Friedrich Merz exclaims: "We are voting for freedom today too!" Whoever sacrifices the freedom of Ukraine today would sacrifice the freedom of Europe tomorrow, he claims.

»Yes, we have problems in Germany. We are a world cultural city. Berlin radiates into the world.«

“Yes, we have problems in Germany,” admits the Chancellor. "But we live in a fantastic country." The economic downturn and the unemployment rate hardly seem to bother Merz. "We are on the way out of the crisis." He announced that the cabinet would approve a ten-point plan against the abuse of the welfare state next Wednesday. Germany should remain a country of immigration, but immigration into the social systems should be prevented.

Nothing should be taken away from anyone - if you listen to the speeches at this election campaign event, then especially not large corporations' housing stock in Berlin. Friedrich Merz hopes that Finance Senator Evers will become the next Governing Mayor of Berlin. Evers warns of “mass expropriations” and claims that if large private housing stocks are socialized, rents will rise even further. The left wants to do exactly that, to worsen the suffering, and then exploit this for their own populist purposes.

“Keeping extremists away from power” is the theme of the evening. "The strengthening of the political fringes causes us great concern," explains Lukas Krieger, general secretary of the Berlin CDU. But he doesn't say a word about the AfD, which, at 18 percent, is only two to three percentage points behind the CDU in the polls for the House of Representatives election. Lukas Krieger only seems to have a headache with Die Linke, which is on a par with the CDU or even in the lead. “The Left has the chance to conquer the Red City Hall,” says the General Secretary.

However, given the housing shortage and the rent crisis, the idea of ​​socialization is well received by the population - there was clearly a referendum in 2021 that has not yet been implemented - the CDU has come up with something different. Why should Elif Eralp (Left Party) not be allowed to become mayor? Because she did not take action against the “anti-Semites” and “Jew-haters” of her party in the Neukölln district association who supported Palestine solidarity.

The key witness for this is Volker Beck, who was a member of the Bundestag for the Greens from 1994 to 2017 and has been chairman of the German-Israeli Society since 2022. Beck takes the stage on Thursday evening after Merz has already said goodbye. Up until then, all of the CDU speakers had at most spoken casually about “extremists from the left and right” for almost an hour and a half, but then devoted themselves exclusively to the left. Volker Beck is the first to say that the 43.8 percent for the AfD in the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt scares him. But he also fears for the Jews in Berlin if the left, who "fantasize" themselves into the Red City Hall, actually come to power, explains Volker Beck. If the Left does not manage to take a clear stance against the terrorist organization Hamas, how will it guarantee the safety of Berlin's Jews, he asks. Beck exclaims: “No government with the AfD or the Left here in Berlin!”

This is also an announcement to the Greens, who are again considering a red-red-green Senate, as it existed until 2023. However, just having the SPD as a coalition partner will no longer be enough for the CDU. Both parties have lost too much support for this. They need the Greens as a third party if they want to stay in power and keep the left in opposition. “Berlin, stay stable,” is the slogan issued by the CDU during the election campaign. But the structure is wobbling.

The journalist Michael Sontheimer, who co-founded the daily newspaper "Taz" in 1979 in the orbit of West Berlin's Alternative List at the time, recently organized an election recommendation for Elif Eralp signed by personalities from culture and science, in which the writer Wladimir Kaminer, among others, took part. When the recommendation was presented on August 20, Sontheimer said: He had examined the allegations that the Berlin Left was a radical bunch of anti-Semites and had not found them confirmed. It could happen that the Palestinian Ahmed Abed, whom Die Linke would like to make district mayor of Neukölln, might say something. But otherwise everything is okay.

A Neukölln Left candidate for Sunday's election recently responded to a television station's question as to whether Berlin had a problem with anti-Semitism: »Of course Berlin has a problem with anti-Semitism. The number of incidents is increasing. We have to do something about it.”

The “nd.Genossenschaft” belongs to those who read and write it. With your contribution, you ensure that our journalism remains accessible to everyone - without any media corporation, billionaire or paywall.

→ report independently and critically → focus on overlooked topics → give marginalized voices a platform → counter misinformation → initiate and further develop left-wing debates

You can make the difference with “Voluntary Pay” or a cooperative share. You help keep this newspaper alive. So that nd remains.