BERLIN — Germany’s largest political party will choose a new leader on Saturday, with the winner well positioned to succeed Angela Merkel as the next chancellor of Europe’s leading economy.
Regardless of the result, it will signal a new chapter for Germany and Europe, where the staid but steady leadership of Ms. Merkel has been a constant for the past 15 years. She earned respect for holding Europe together through repeated crises and, most recently, her deft handling of the coronavirus pandemic over the past year.
“In a sense, an era is ending,” said Herfried Münkler, a political scientist at Humboldt University in Berlin. “But in certain basic positions, such as the geopolitical situation and the economic conditions within the E.U., that all remains unchanged, regardless of who’s the chancellor.”
German voters will elect a new government on Sept. 26, and Ms. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union remains the country’s most popular party, according to a survey by Infratest/Dimap last week.
Ms. Merkel led the party for 18 years, stepping down in 2018. She was replaced by one-time heir apparent Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who announced her own departure nearly a year ago over internal party strife. Since then, three men have been jockeying for the leadership position. But no clear front-runner has emerged.
While all three candidates appear to have a lot in common — all male, all Roman Catholic, all from the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia — each harbors a divergent vision of the future of the party that has governed Germany for 50 of the past 70 years.
Here is a look at the candidates and where their leadership could take Germany:
Armin Laschet — the Centrist
In terms of experience, Mr. Laschet, the governor of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia since 2017, has the strongest hand. The only candidate who has won an election and served as a governor, the 59-year-old Mr. Laschet has nevertheless struggled to generate enthusiasm for his campaign.
He announced his candidacy last February, flanked by Ms. Merkel’s health minister, Jens Spahn, who ranked above the chancellor as Germany’s most popular politician in a survey in late December. Mr. Spahn had sought the party leadership position in 2018, but this time around, he pledged to back Mr. Laschet.
The popularity of Mr. Spahn and another man who is not vying for party leadership, Markus Söder, the governor of Bavaria, has led top Christian Democratic officials to sever the decision over who will run for chancellor in elections from the party leader vote on Saturday. That means that whoever is chosen party leader will not necessarily be the next chancellor.
Mr. Spahn’s backing of Mr. Laschet was supposed to garner support from those who saw in the 40-year-old Mr. Spahn a chance to rejuvenate the party. But instead, it has shifted…
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