Friedrich Merz in Thuringia: A Federal Chancellor as an Eastern one

The Federal Chancellor stands in the stucco of the Ettersburg Castle and looks closely at the cameras. He thought about something for this day.

“I want to take her for a little thought experiment,” says Friedrich Merz. If you look at the east of Germany and compare with France and “take out the capitals”, ie Berlin and Paris: “Then the average per capita income in eastern Germany is higher than in France.”

The teaching of the experiment is of course the realization “that we”, as Merz puts it, “have already achieved a lot”. But of course, of course, the Chancellor knows where he is, namely at the conference of the East Minister President. So he adds immediately: “Nevertheless, we know that there is still a lot to do.”

Actually, the Chancellor should only be in the Bundestag this Thursday. After all, this time the choice of the new Federal Constitutional judges is to work-and the voice of the CDU MP Merz is also needed. But in between he quickly flies to Thuringia with the helicopter, to the green hills near Weimar, where the eastern heads of government meet at Ettersburg Castle.

This time it had to be easy. For almost five months, Merz will be an Federal Chancellor. He came around a lot at this time, in Germany, especially in the world. But in the east of the Federal Republic, of course, he was only spotted during a short excursion to the Navy near Rostock during a short excursion.

Well, on Thursday afternoon, he’s finally here. It rains. And rains. And rains. A persistent low has settled in the southeast.

The mood in Weimar also has a cloudy appearance, despite a collective smile for the cameras. For a good decade, the prime ministers have been in a political struggle for wear against the AfD. In Saxony, Michael Kretschmer now only leads a CDU SPD minority government; In Thuringia, Mario Voigt has a CDU-BSW-SPD coalition, and still has no majority. Similar constellations are born in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the state parliament is newly elected in a short year.

Or the AfD even takes over. In the morning, the Schwerin Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig expresses the latest poll values ​​from her country to her counterpart. 38 percent for the AfD, 19 percent for its SPD: The numbers are even more bitter than in Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD was recently measured at 39 percent, but the ruling CDU is still 27 percent.

At least in part, this also has something to do with the things that are negotiated at Ettersburg Castle. Because even if the reunification is for the 35th time next week, some agenda items of the 54th East Minister Presidential Conference sound similar to those of the first. The historical compensation for disadvantage is still struggling. And it is still all about money, whether for the municipalities, the infrastructure or research.

However, the topic of upgrading is new. In the morning, the Chancellor has not yet landed, the heads of government sit together with SPD defense minister Boris Pistorius. Kretschmer and Voigt have prepared a decision with a long catalog of demands. Central to this is the demand that the east also gets something from the many defense billions, after all, the large armaments companies are all in the west and not even maintain an extended workbench in the east.

The round meets in the “rifle hall” in the cultivation of the castle. In particular, Kretschmer urges with clear words that a binding part of the armor orders go to the east. The process has a certain irony with a politician who constantly demands more diplomacy with Russia and publicly explained how “unbearable” he finds the concept of “tuning” introduced by Pistorius.

The debate is held hard. Voigt and other prime ministers assist Kretschmer. But Pistorius doesn’t want to promise anything. Such a clause alone does not go to the procurement law, he says. On his departure, he says in the microphones that the orders should of course go “to all regions of Germany”. But that will take a while. “Until then, we have to put the speed of production in the foreground” – and this speed, of course, does not say that he shouldn’t be generated in the east.

What the Minister of Defense is involved is an investment conference for East Germany, in which, in addition to the relevant armaments companies, CDU Economic Minister Katherina Reiche should also participate. There, says Pistorius, it is then important to “explore” the conditions under which orders could be triggered.

Merz will be similarly non -binding later. Although he says, “industrial capacities that we also need in the military-technological area should also be created in East Germany”. But: “The federal government can only influence a limited extent.”

But in contrast to Pistorius, the Chancellor presents himself extremely conciliatory. Even if the meeting because of the Berlin judge’s election ranks to a two -hour working dinner in the castle, everything that deals with the state chiefs is ticked off for veal cheeks and soufflé: investments, energy prices, traffic routes.

“We now want to get this on the way together,” promises Merz afterwards. “We will of course also support and co -finance from the special fund for investments and climate protection projects in the east.”

To what extent the Chancellor enforces this still has to be shown. His sympathy for the place of the meeting seems more authentic. Like the city of Weimar, the nicely restored Ettersburg Castle represents the Janus -headed history of Germany. Goethe, Schiller and Herder once led their table talks here. About 100 years later, the Nazis built the Buchenwald concentration camp on the Ettersberg.

Merz says in an internal round, he will soon come back privately with his wife. He publicly explains that from then on he wants to “work a little more closely” with the East German heads of government. He would not leave it at a “unique encounter” for the annual prime minister conference.

Will the Sauerlander Friedrich Merz become an Eastern understanding of his old days? Doubts are required. Nevertheless, Merz should also be clear that he will not survive his term of office accident if East Germany drifts further right wing.

“We all know that all over Germany, but especially in the east, we see afraid of relegation,” he says. It is about confidence and people trust the political leadership again more: “They can do that, and it is going on with this country, step by step.”

This said, the trip to the east is almost over again. The helicopter lifts the next step towards Berlin, for the election of the judge.