Germany is losing patience with Friedrich Merz

Ancient Romans kept a sacred eternal flame dedicated to the goddess Vesta, defender of hearth and home, in a dedicated temple guarded by a special priesthood: the Vestal Virgins. Since July the Vestal Virgins on display in Berlin’s Bode Museum, largely 18th century French artworks, have had to share room 257 with a new, popular roommate.Gleaming blue and gold, the official portrait of Angela Merkel has attracted such crowds – Bode Museum ticket sales are up 85 per cent – that its public display has been extended by two months until January. Germany’s second-to-last chancellor is by far its most popular.“She was dedicated, a shrewd analyst but at the same time human, who gave us 16 good years,” says Gisela Eggert, a retired university lecturer visiting from Bonn. “But the painting is a bit primitive – the eyes are all wrong – compared to her complexity.”Angela Merkel’s four terms in office from 2005 were filled with drama – from the banking and refugee crises to the Covid-19 pandemic – but the seven years since have ramped up still further with refugees and rearmament, thanks to Russia’s war on Ukraine, and a persistently flat economy.READ MOREA portrait of former German chancellor Angela Merkel on display at the Bode Museum, Berlin. Photograph: Adam Berry/Getty Images That, in turn, has triggered a record wave of insolvencies and compounded serious doubts about Germany’s industrial base. Small wonder, then, that Merkel is being mythologised as a modern-day Vestal Virgin: a defender of hearth, home − and better times.In room 257, no one has anything good to say about today’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz: too legalistic, too arrogant, a poor communicator, an appalling man.He is just 18 months in office but only 13 per cent of Germans think he is doing a good job. His centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), hobbled by an identity crisis and daily coalition squabbles, has slumped 10 points in polls since election day in February 2025 to a record low of 19 per cent.Meanwhile the far-right Alternative for Germany has surged past the CDU to first place in polls and a record 30 per cent support.You can see Germany’s grim mood on the shelves of a bookshop near the Bode Museum. Half a dozen new books warn about the rise of fascism while the best-selling non-fiction book is called Germany 2033, imagining the rise of the AfD to power a century after the Nazis.[ Nostalgia and lost pride: the fuel that feeds Europe’s far rightOpens in new window ]“The resistance is far lower than people before imagined, because no one believes any more in its efficacy,” writes author Justus Bender of German election night in seven years’ time. “People submit. They grumble.”Germany 2033 Bender’s version of Germany’s immediate future is not as fantastical as it was in the Merkel era. The greatest danger to his fantasy becoming reality, he thinks, is an army of politicians and officials still in denial. They insist, despite endless proof to the contrary, that their old, trusted political strategies – facts and reality – will work against anxiety-driven politics peddled by the AfD.After the Bode Museum and bookshop we continue along the bank of the river Spree to the Reichstag parliament building. A fiery debate is happening inside and chancellor Friedrich Merz is struggling on two fronts: with a patchy political record and a scratchy, cold-ridden voice.After recent state election shocks – and a first AfD-led government looming next month in Saxony-Anhalt – Merz is accentuating the positive: pointing to a 2026 growth forecast of 1.3 per cent, double previous expectations, along with rising foreign investment.What Germany needs to unblock itself, he says, is the power of positive thinking and “creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it”, a nod to the sniggering 150 AfD parliamentarians seated before him.German chancellor Friedrich Merz attending a debate at the Bundestag in Berlin earlier this week. Photograph: John MacDougall/AFP via Getty Images The term “creative effort” originated as “efforts créateurs”, with Robert Schuman, the former French foreign minister, in a May 1950 speech considered a founding text of the modern European Union.Some 76 years later in Berlin, Merz concedes German voters have “justified dissatisfaction and justified feelings of injustice” and can only be won back through “creative effort” of its politicians.But creative effort, critics say, is precisely what Merz and his ministers lack.“Germany is a conservative country but there is too little on offer at the moment for the political centre,” said Prof Klaus Schubert, political scientist at the University of Münster.The uncertain present, he suggests, is why people are romanticising the recent political past and long for a “Mutti” Merkel or a table-thumping “Basta” chancellor like Gerhard Schröder. A senior Schröder-era cabinet member is happy to speak to The Irish Times about the ex-chancellor, but would rather not be named “so I can speak my mind openly”.The problem that compounds Germany’s many structural challenges, this ex-minister thinks, is Merz: someone who “offers no perspective or leadership”.[ If the EU continues to drift, disintegration becomes a more plausible futureOpens in new window ]“Instead you have a chancellor complaining in public that his own ministers have yet to deliver reform proposals,” said the Schröder-era minister. “Where is his authority? That would have been unthinkable with Schröder.”Another big political difference between now and 2002, when Schröder presented dramatic social and economic reforms, is the sense of urgency. Today’s pressures are palpable – a cost-of-living and housing crises, security fears and record insolvencies – but not unique to Germany. “Back then we had five million unemployed, today it’s two million, so the pressure to act then was far greater,” adds the ex-minister.Out of sight beneath Germany’s hood, though, everyone can hear the country’s economic engine making worrying noises.The Volkswagen AG factory in Wolfsburg, Germany. Photograph: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg A chronic shortage of new ideas, a national fear of risk-taking and shortage of skilled workers have all brought Germany’s industrial base to the brink. Instead of a leap forward, Merz is being pulled back: lobbying Brussels to water down a proposed 2035 ban on combustion engines.Back at home, pension and welfare reforms have been stalled for months and, critics say, are of a homeopathic nature. The long-flagged fiscal reform left untouched Germany’s Byzantine tax law and offered instead €10 billion in tax relief.Munich’s Ifo economic think-tank worries the Merz government seems focused more on plucking low-hanging fruit than the more prickly pears higher up: punitive energy prices, surging non-wage costs, ballooning bureaucracy and a growing AI gap vis-a-vis China and the US.“Most people know that if the government does not act more decisively than it has so far,” warns Ifo president Clemens Fuest, “that it is putting prosperity at risk.”[ Germany’s political centre is not holding. It is tearing itself apartOpens in new window ]Some observers suggest that Germany is beyond risk of – and already trapped in – a vicious circle of decline. In this scenario, mainstream parties’ fear of the political fringes hobbles their own decisiveness, in turn driving increasing numbers of voters to the fringes.Election numbers tell their own tale: modern Germany’s first grand coalition, lead by Angela Merkel in 2005, controlled 73 per cent of Bundestag seats. Twenty years later, the Merz grand coalition has just 52 per cent of seats.This dramatic shift from the political centre, and a lack of urgency to reverse it, is a warning signal for many with an eye on the last century. Dr Mark Jones, historian of Germany’s interwar Weimar period at UCD, sees “processes taking place now that overlap with those of the past”.“The first ‘grand coalition’ was a sort of emergency message intended to create a super stable majority, whereas today’s grand coalition could barely scrape a majority,” he argues. Nearly eight decades in, he thinks the ongoing drift in Berlin suggests the modern German federal republic is “not as stable and successful a political project as its own history myths would have us believe.”