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Markus Söder has been Bavarian state premier for only five years now, but it seems longer, given his overwhelming presence in the role. The 56-year-old dominates his party, the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), to such an extent that his deputies and ministers have little national profile and even less hope of replacing him any time soon.
The CSU, which once boasted election results in Germany’s biggest state of over 60% in 2003, has been leaking voters for several years now and gained only 37% at the last Bavarian election in 2018.
The poor showing was widely attributed to the rise of rival right-wing parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and especially the Free Voters (FW), with whom Söder then entered into a coalition. Current polls suggest not much has changed since 2018, with the CSU likely falling short of the 40% that would signal Söder’s strength.
A sausage for all seasons
Söder’s public appearances are still relaxed, confident, and funny — he is often described as a political entertainer, which is rare in Germany, where more reserved, sober characters like former Chancellor Angela Merkel and current Chancellor Olaf Scholz tend to win in nationwide elections.
“He’s almost a cabaret performer,” CSU supporter Sabine Maier told DW at an election event in Ebersberg, outside Munich, in late September, likening him to Wild West movie heroes. At that event, Söder regaled the crowd with an hour of well-rehearsed jokes at the expense of his left-wing opponents. To hear Söder speak on the campaign trail, one would conclude that everything that is wrong with Germany is down to the Green Party and its supposed insistence on banning things like meat and sweets.
Söder’s social media accounts have capitalized on this lighthearted, populist style — there’s now a cookbook to go with his successful #Söderisst hashtag (“Söder eats”) — but he also often uses his accounts to talk about his political awakening and his love of his home state.
He famously posted a picture of himself in his youth pointing exuberantly at a poster of his political hero, Franz Josef Strauss, on his bedroom wall. Strauss, the CSU
leader from 1961 until his death in 1988, is a godlike figure for both the CSU and Bavaria, a state he governed for a decade with an absolute majority from 1978 onward.
Both the party headquarters in Munich and the city’s airport bear Strauss’ name, and Söder invokes his name at every opportunity, particularly when it comes to combating the far right.
Strauss’ much-quoted dictum, that he would not tolerate any “democratically legitimated party” right of the CSU, has now come under severe pressure: In Bavaria, Söder now has to contend with two such parties: The AfD and the FW.
‘Shameless and clever’
Söder was born in 1967 in Nuremberg, Bavaria’s second biggest city, to a mother and father who ran a small building firm. He likes to tell an anecdote of his tough, bricklayer father and his opinion of his son’s uselessness: “‘Kid, you have no chance of a decent job, you’ve got two left hands. The one thing that could save you is your big mouth. Maybe that’d be enough to become a priest or politician.'”
In fact, Söder’s first job after completing his law studies was as a journalist for the Bavarian state broadcaster BR.
He joined the CSU in his teenage years, and led its youth organization, the Junge Union, from 1995 to 2003. That gave him the springboard into the state parliament and prepared his rise through various, increasingly prestigious posts: CSU general secretary, Bavarian minister for federal and European affairs, minister for environment and health and finally finance minister in the cabinet of Horst Seehofer, who soon recognized him as a rival.
Söder’s style was often considered too populist by his peers, and his biographer, Süddeutsche Zeitung journalist Roman Deininger, once described him as “shameless and clever at the same time.”
By 2017, Söder’s rivalry with Seehofer had become an open power struggle, which was resolved when Seehofer moved to Berlin to become interior minister in Merkel’s final cabinet, leaving Bavaria free for Söder.
Chancellor-candidate in waiting
But that wasn’t the end of Söder’s ambition: Ahead of the 2021 general election, the Bavarian’s confidence almost broke the CSU’s historic alliance with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the conservative sister party that was dominated by Merkel for almost two decades.
Söder perceived a power vacuum at the top of the CDU when Merkel retired, and threw his hat in the ring as the two parties’ chancellor candidate to run against the Social Democrats’ Olaf Scholz. Many saw him as a stronger candidate than the
CDU’s chosen leader, Armin Laschet. Ultimately, the CDU leadership rallied behind Laschet, who went on to lose the election after running a gaffe-riddled campaign.
Since then, Söder has stressed that he has settled into his role as Bavarian leader and has no more ambition for the top job in Berlin.
His relationship with the CDU’s new leader Friedrich Merz, himself no stranger to populist right-wing soundbites, has proved surprisingly harmonious as they focus on their common enemy: Scholz’s center-left coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats.
Specifically, the two men have come to identify the Green Party as the main target for their political pot-shots and Söder has ruled out entering a coalition with them on the regional level. The Bavarian Green Party, however, likes to point out that he was once the state premier who hugged a tree for a photo op in 2020, promising a climate-friendly overhaul for Bavaria.
Though his ambitions remain intact, Söder’s prospects of becoming the new chancellor candidate for the CDU/CSU currently seem doubtful. Not only do Merz and several other CDU figures have a good claim to the role in 2025, but he also has to contend with the rising power of the right-wing FW at home. Söder himself said in May this year that, for him, the issue of chancellorship was over. “I’m not available,” he told public broadcaster ZDF.
As ever, the fortunes of the CSU leader depend on the power and prosperity of Bavaria.
Edited by: Rina Goldenberg
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