Federal election 2025: Scholz talks about “Fritze Merz”

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has accused CDU leader Friedrich Merz of spreading falsehoods about him. “Fritze Merz likes to tell nonsense,” said Scholz that evening on ZDF’s “heute journal”. Tünkram is Low German and means something like stupid stuff or nonsense. Scholz was referring to criticism from Merz that the Chancellor often sits in silence at EU summits without getting involved politically. In the Bundestag in the afternoon, Merz said that the way the Chancellor was moving in the EU was “shaming.”

Merz reacted angrily in the same broadcast. “I pray that the Federal Chancellor should refer to me personally and attack me in this way. But that is obviously a pattern that we are seeing now.” Merz cited as an example that Scholz had also denied FDP leader Christian Lindner’s “moral maturity” for a government office in the Bundestag in the afternoon. “He talks about respect all the time. But the moment someone disagrees with him, his respect stops. I won’t go to this level,” said Merz.

However, Merz personally attacked Scholz at the weekend and wrote that Scholz was isolated in the EU. “Unfortunately, you have to put it this way: the majority of European heads of state and government simply no longer want to meet the German Chancellor, who either sits in silence for hours or lectures the world.”

Further criticism of Scholz’s statement came from former CDU chancellor candidate and North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Armin Laschet. “With all understanding for Scholz’s frustration on the day of his failure, ridiculing the competitor’s name is unacceptable. The opposition leader is not the ‘Fritze’ for the Chancellor,” he wrote on X. That destroys all respect among democrats. CDU presidium member Jens Spahn, former health minister, wrote on X: “S in SPD stands for styleless.”