Friedrich Merz’s revenge

Friedrich Merz, the German conservative vying to become the next chancellor, doesn’t take kindly to criticism. 

Just ask his lawyers. 

With the race to become the next leader of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats about to reach its conclusion in a virtual party conference on Saturday, Merz — a leading contender for the job — has pursued a behind-the-scenes offensive against some of his critics, threatening journalists with legal action and asking a court to muzzle a political rival over a tweet.

Merz, a wealthy corporate lawyer who has been involved in German politics for more than three decades, has a long history of such tactics. He once even threatened a television news channel with legal action after it broadcast a clip of him sleeping in parliament. His recent targets have included a leader of Germany’s Left party and POLITICO. Merz did not respond to requests for comment about how often he has sent his lawyers after journalists and political rivals. In Germany, such cases are often not made public, making it difficult to determine how many legal threats and lawsuits Merz has initiated over the years. 

Germany is a litigious society and Merz is both a lawyer and a former judge. Nonetheless, aside from cases involving alleged violations of privacy, it is extremely rare in Germany for politicians, particularly those aspiring to high office, to confront critics with cease-and-desist demands, let alone a lawsuit. In her nearly 16 years as chancellor, for example, Merkel — arguably the most attacked politician in Germany — isn’t known to have sought legal recourse even once. 

The most prominent such cases to come to light recently have involved the political fringe. Two recent instances concerned the legality of referring to individual politicians in the far-right Alternative for Germany as fascists and anti-Semites. The Hohenzollern clan, the family of the former German Kaiser, is also known for turning to the courts to correct what they consider to be “lies” about them in the press. (They’ve done so at least 120 times, according to the Kaiser’s great-grandson.)

Merz’s objections to his critics’ characterizations have ranged from the serious to the mundane. 

Of particularly annoyance to Merz most recently has been the portrayal of his stance on rape in marriage. 

On December 6, Fabio De Masi, deputy leader of the Left party’s parliamentary group in the Bundestag, sent a tweet that accused Merz of “voting against criminalizing rape in marriage.” The tweet was a reference to landmark rape legislation debated for 25 years and passed in 1997, when Merz was an MP. The aim of the law was to lift barriers for wives seeking protection from their husbands. In 1967, Germany’s highest court had ruled that wives had a “duty to engage in intercourse,” and many conservatives argued that the proposed law would undermine the institution of marriage.

Merz insisted that he never opposed criminalizing rape in marriage, arguing that it was already a crime under the existing assault laws of the time. He said that he and many of his colleagues voted against the legislation because they wanted the new law to include language to allow victims to withdraw charges against their spouses.

Supporters of the 1997 bill, including Merkel, argued at the time that such a provision would make it too easy for husbands to pressure their wives into backing down and it passed without the so-called “reconciliation clause.”  

After sending De Masi a cease-and-desist demand, which the MP declined to comply with, Merz asked a court in Frankfurt to issue an injunction against De Masi to prevent him from making the claim.

In mid-December, the Frankfurt court refused, informing Merz that his underlying complaint had “no chance of success.” The court also disputed Merz’s assertion that German law effectively criminalized rape in marriage prior to 1997. Merz subsequently withdrew his complaint.

De Masi, whose original tweet was liked 17,000 times, called the court’s action “a cold shower” for Merz in his bid to become chancellor. 

#WomenAgainstMerz

Merz’s decision to go after De Masi may have less to do with the MP’s tweet than Merz’s difficult standing among women, however. 

A prominent figure in German politics at the turn of the century, Merz all but left the public eye after losing out to Merkel for the CDU’s leadership, only to return in late 2018 after she announced her departure. 

In contrast to Merkel’s centrist approach to politics, Merz has long cultivated a straight-arrow, law-and-order image. As pictures of refugees living in inhumane conditions in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Greece drew headlines early this month, for example, Merz said he would oppose bringing any of them to Germany, adding that Berlin needed to do a better job deporting refugees whose asylum applications were revoked.  

Ever since Merz launched a political comeback, polls have consistently shown that women, both within the CDU and outside it, are not drawn to his brand of conservatism.

That’s a big problem if Merz is to have any hope of succeeding Merkel. As the leadership vote slated for Saturday approaches, Merz has struggled to find an answer. Last week, the CDU’s women’s association, known as the Frauen Union, endorsed Merz’s rivals in the leadership race. And this week, #WirFrauengegenMerz — “We women against Merz” — was trending on German Twitter.  

People who have worked closely with Merz over the years, both during his time as an MP and during his more recent tenure as a business lobbyist, say there’s a more basic reason for the candidate’s litigious streak — he has difficulty coping with criticism. 

That may help explain a cease-and-desist demand a Merz lawyer sent to POLITICO in early December regarding an article about the politician that appeared under the headline “Meet the German Donald Trump.” 

Merz’s complaint did not take issue with the underlying thesis of the piece (that Merz’s anti-establishment political strategy bears a striking resemblance to Trump’s), but focused instead on the article’s assertion that he had “declined requests for comment.” His lawyer argued that while Merz had refused several requests for an interview, the politician had not specifically declined to comment on the content of the article. 

In the letter, Merz’s lawyer threatened to sue POLITICO if it didn’t refrain from making the claim and demanded that the publisher pay Merz’s legal fees. 

POLITICO refused, dismissing Merz’s claims via its own lawyers as “baseless.” 

Teenage rampage?

Merz has been turning his lawyers on reporters for decades.

As head of the CDU’s parliamentary group in the early 2000s, when he was vying for the party’s leadership, he kept a close eye on how the press portrayed him.  

In late 2000, he gave an interview to Berlin daily Tagesspiegel in which he claimed to have been a wild, long-haired teenager, driving a motorcycle, listening to The Doors, and smoking and drinking at 14. After the article appeared, however, one of Merz’s closest friends from his youth denied the account. “Our buddy always wore his hair the way he does today,” Ernst Ferdinand, Merz’s boyhood comrade, wrote in a letter to Die Zeit. 

Reporters who traveled to Merz’s hometown of Brilon in Germany’s Sauerland region couldn’t find anyone to back up his claims. 

But Merz stuck to his guns. 

Titanic, a German satirical magazine, picked up the story, embellishing Merz’s account of his supposedly rebellious youth and dubbing him “Fotzenfritz” (“pussy-hound Fritz”). 

Merz threatened the magazine and another publication that picked up on the story with legal action for “offending his honor.” They removed the articles from their websites. 

But the Fotzenfritz moniker stuck. Pranksters registered the domain name fotzenfritz.de, redirecting traffic to Merz’s official site. Merz’s lawyers eventually managed to have the site taken down, only to see it sprout up again as fotzenfritz.tk, which has also since been suspended.

“Titanic used the opportunity and legal complaint to continue the Fotzenfritz campaign,” said Martin Sonneborn, Titanic’s then-editor who is now an MEP for the Die Partei, a satirical German political party. “We later donated the fotzenfritz.tk URL, symbolically, to Merz as a joke.”

Slumber party

Not long after the Fotzenfritz affair, Merz faced a fresh provocation. 

German news channel n-tv ran a tongue-in-cheek promotional clip showing several MPs, including Merz, sleeping in parliament. Merz wasn’t amused and threatened to sue.

Though neither of the other politicians featured in the clip complained, n-tv agreed to stop airing it.

“We wanted to have a good relations with all politicians and that was the end of it,” explained Helmut Brandstätter, who was n-tv’s editor-in-chief at the time. 

Such ready acquiescence probably explains why Merz hasn’t shied from wielding legal threats.

German political journalism is a competitive field and many of the journalists covering German politics avoid a critical approach for fear it could cost them access or an interview with a prominent political figure like Merz.   

Others can’t afford the legal bills. Defending against such cases can cost thousands of euros, a financial risk many publishers aren’t willing to take. 

Indeed, German media are reluctant to even report on such cases. 

The news that the Frankfurt court shot down Merz’s attempt to silence De Masi over the rape legislation received little attention outside of left-wing media, for example.

Not that the setback is likely to dampen Merz’s enthusiasm for taking his critics to court. 

In a recent appearance on TikTok, Merz was asked what kids should be taught in school. Merz responded that children should learn “how beautiful” the legal profession is. 

“Jurisprudence, to become a judge, a lawyer, is a great thing,” he said with a wide grin. 

Nette Nöstlinger contributed reporting.