Conservative German Party Turns to a Woman to Regain Its Stature

In a triumph over scandal, sexism and snobbery, Angela Merkel won unanimous endorsement Monday from elders of the opposition Christian Democratic Union to become Germany’s first female leader of a major party and the conservatives’ best hope of winning back voters.

Only a few weeks ago, Merkel was dismissed as having no chance of filling the leadership void left by discredited former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his handpicked successor, Wolfgang Schaeuble.

At 45, she was considered too young. She’s a Protestant in a predominantly Catholic country. She’s from the former Communist East. And, as Kohl paternally branded her with the nickname das Maedchen--the girl--she’s a liberal feminist interloper in a conservative male bastion.

But the party that has governed Germany for most of the post-World War II years has grappled with an identity crisis since accusations surfaced last fall that Kohl and other prominent figures accepted millions in illegal donations.

Confronted with the need to make a fresh start once Kohl resigned as honorary chairman and Schaeuble stepped down as parliamentary and national leader, Merkel’s conservative colleagues came to see her background as just what they needed to project a different image.

“I know she has what it takes to reunite the party and get it back to a position where it can start winning elections,” said Juergen Ruettgers, the CDU candidate for governor in North Rhine-Westphalia, where crucial elections loom in May.

Merkel joked with journalists after her nomination that “it shows that even women are people too.”

Her uncontested candidacy for the party leadership will be formally voted on when the CDU holds its annual convention April 9-11. But her declaration of willingness to accept the post and the party national executive board’s unanimous vote of approval removed any doubt about who will succeed Schaeuble, who resigned last month when his own dubious role in the funding scandal became apparent.

Several regional CDU leaders and former Kohl lieutenants had hinted that they would challenge Merkel. But they dropped out of the running as her public standing steadily rose. As party general secretary, she was the first senior CDU figure to criticize Kohl’s shady financial practices, the damage he has done to the party and his stubborn refusal to disclose the sources of his slush funds.

Latest popularity polls put Merkel ahead of both Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the charismatic Greens leader who usually occupies the top spot.

Although Merkel received a unanimous go-ahead from the hierarchy, it was clear even before the vote that her battle to transform a party composed of mostly older and traditional voters has just begun.

Conservative media such as Berlin’s Die Welt criticize her appearance, describing her as frumpy and suggesting new hairstyles, makeup and clothes.

Merkel’s emergence to lead the national CDU could position her well to run for chancellor in the 2002 election--an advantage envied by potential rivals such as Bavarian Gov. Edmund Stoiber of the CDU’s sister party, the Christian Social Union.

Stoiber, who has his eye on the next race against Schroeder, reacted to Merkel’s endorsement for the national job by expressing the hope that she would “very closely cooperate” with party seniors.

“We shouldn’t get into a youth craze here,” one of the CDU’s four deputy leaders, 64-year-old Norbert Bluem, told the daily Tagesspiegel in announcing that he will not be seeking reelection at the April convention. “Experience in the economy has shown us that it doesn’t pay to consider anyone over 50 to be so much scrap metal.”

Although she is at least a decade younger than most of the top CDU figures, Merkel is two years older than Kohl was when he first won election as party leader in 1973. The “chancellor of unity” held the highest CDU office until his defeat by Schroeder in 1998, when he passed the party reins to Schaeuble.

Unlike Schaeuble, Merkel will run only the national affairs of the party while another young star, 44-year-old Friedrich Merz, manages its parliamentary faction.

One of Merkel’s most daunting tasks will be to unburden the party of the staggering debts it faces from fines and back taxes on the illegal contributions. The CDU has already been fined $21 million for its financial shenanigans in 1998, and criminal and parliamentary investigations are probing more than a decade of funding records. Most party leaders expect the punishments to exceed $50 million, and they could be several times that figure if Kohl continues to refuse to name donors.

The daughter of a teacher and a Lutheran minister, Merkel was born in Hamburg but was taken by her parents to a small parish in Communist East Germany when only a few months old. She earned a doctorate in physics and worked as a chemist before entering politics just before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

She eventually drew Kohl’s attention and served as a Cabinet minister and the party’s only female head of a state party organization. Merkel married her longtime partner just over a year ago.