East CDU members want more East Germans in the party leadership after Mario Czaja's departure as general secretary

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CDU politicians Linnemann, Merz, Czaja

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JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP

Several East German Christian Democrats are pushing for an East German to move up to the party leadership. On Tuesday, CDU leader Friedrich Merz announced his decision to make North Rhine-Westphalia's Carsten Linnemann general secretary. Mario Czaja, who was born in East Berlin and held the office for about a year and a half, was left behind.

Linnemann, on the other hand, was previously CDU federal vice president and thus a member of the party presidium. There is now a place available.

"We have a tense situation in East Germany," Brandenburg's general secretary Gordon Hoffmann told SPIEGEL. "The change of general secretary was a good decision for the CDU. For Linnemann in the presidium, however, an East German should now follow."

Merz has sympathy for more East Germans

The state chairman in Brandenburg, Jan Redmann, has a similar view. "The CDU must not become a West German party, then it will have no chance in the East," he warned on Welt TV. As a native of East Berlin, Czaja was "also a representative of the East German states". He therefore expects that in the by-elections "someone from the East will come to the presidium again".

The Thuringian CDU politician Mike Mohring has a similar view: "The decision to change the general secretary was the right one." For the succession to Linnemann's deputy position, however, "someone from the Eastern regional associations should move up again in order to keep the number of East Germans in the presidium stable".

Franz-Robert Liskow, state chairman in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, is more cautious. "I am very confident that things will go well with Carsten Linnemann as Secretary General. I think the change was the right decision," he told SPIEGEL. For the next party congress, one would then have to "look accordingly for the vacant place in the presidium". With the two Prime Ministers, Reiner Haseloff and Michael Kretschmer, "the East is very well represented in the Presidium". In the end, the decisive factor is "the right minds, not their origins," says the head of the country.

Merz himself said he had "sympathy" for increasing the number of East Germans in the presidium. But here, too, qualification is the first thing that counts, not origin.«

In principle, the decision in favor of Linnemann is welcomed in the East German state associations, as can be heard. Czaja and Merz did not work well as a team and both tended to be lone wolves. Linnemann, on the other hand, is well connected, even in the depth of the party in the East German state associations.