Markus Söder: The prince of Bavaria

BERLIN — A 54-year-old Bavarian Bible thumper who fathered a love child and enjoys dressing in campy costumes might sound like the last person one would expect to become the rock star of German conservatism.

But then the normal rules of the game have never applied to Markus Söder, one of the two conservative contenders vying for Angela Merkel’s throne. 

Like the other leading lights of contemporary populism — from Donald Trump to Boris Johnson to Matteo Salvini — Söder makes up for what he lacks in substance with the power of his gargantuan personality. Considered by some to be the most talented German politician of his generation, Söder’s charisma and charm have proved irresistible to voters well beyond his Bavarian homeland. 

Just ask Armin Laschet, the leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and Söder’s nemesis in the battle to become the standard-bearer of Germany’s conservative alliance. A decision on who will become the candidate for the top job is expected as soon as Friday. Given the conservative bloc’s size, the winner will have a good chance of succeeding Merkel as chancellor. 

As leader of the CDU, the larger sister of Söder’s Christian Social Union, which is only active in Bavaria, Laschet should have the right of first refusal when it comes to the chancellorship candidacy.

Yet not even the CDU’s massive size advantage (it’s more than four times larger than the CSU in terms of voters) can compensate for the popularity deficit between the two men. Whereas only about 4 percent of Germans ascribe “strong leadership” to Laschet, nearly 60 percent do so for Söder. That has CDU MPs, many of whom are counting on a strong lead candidate to secure their own return to the Bundestag, panicking over the prospect of Laschet topping the ticket. 

Laschet is a rarity in politics — a nice guy.

A consensus builder who worked his way up through the party in his native North Rhine-Westphalia to serve in various capacities, including as an MEP, Laschet is a consummate networker across party lines and a deft behind-the-scenes operator. Those are the kinds of skills that would have made him a shoo-in in the good old days of West Germany, where consensus reigned supreme and regional party bosses, not rank and file members, were the only voices that mattered. 

That might be why the core of Laschet’s base is not to be found among regular voters, but rather among the old white men who long dominated the party.  

“Helmut Kohl was never at the top of the polls,” Elmar Brok, a longtime CDU MEP, now retired, told German public television on Wednesday. “If one has substance and follows a clear line instead of vacillating — which Armin Laschet doesn’t do — that’s the best guarantee for an election victory.”

That may have once been true. But in today’s politics, personality is the key to power. 

And if you’re looking for personality in Germany, Bavaria, the country’s Catholic heartland, famous for its beer halls and dirndls and colorful Germanic dialects, is the obvious place to start. 

Bavarian power

In contrast to Laschet, Söder has never had to worry much about consensus. 

His party, the CSU, which he joined at 16, has governed Bavaria without interruption since 1957, most of that time with an absolute majority. In such a political culture, ruthlessness is often a more useful attribute than diplomatic acumen. By all accounts, Söder has excelled on that front, earning him the nickname “the Franconian Machiavelli,” a nod to his regional roots. 

Söder didn’t so much climb up the party ladder as plot his way to the top. 

A towering man with an affable air that belies his intense ambition, Söder proved to be a master at winning both the confidence of key party power brokers as well the trust of his contemporaries.   

Even years before he became Bavarian premier in 2018, his ascension had an air of inevitability about it. He engineered that move by helping to send his predecessor and longtime bête noire, Horst Seehofer, to Berlin to become interior minister. Not long thereafter, Seehofer also had to hand over the title of party leader to his younger rival. 

Söder’s position, which holds sweeping regional authority, is so coveted that its status is often compared to that enjoyed by the Bavarian kings of yore. 

The grandly titled “minister president,” whose official seat of power is fittingly in a palace built for a prince, has made no secret of how much he enjoys the office.

For months, he responded to persistent speculation about whether he was plotting a move to Berlin with the same stock phrase: “My place is in Bavaria.” 

It’s easy to understand why. For years, Bavaria — home to the likes of BMW and Siemens — has been among Germany’s wealthiest and most successful regions, the envy of the country. 

Why give that up? 

For one, opportunities for CSU leaders to run for Germany’s top job are rare. That said, no one from the CSU has ever won. The two men to try it — Franz Josef Strauß, a godlike figure in Bavarian politics, and Edmund Stoiber, Söder’s mentor — lost, at least in part, because much of the rest of Germany was uncomfortable with their Bavarianness. 

The CSU has always been a notch to the right of its bigger sister, casting itself as the defender of regional mores and traditions as well as the values of the Catholic Church. In much of the rest of Germany, Bavarian politics are mocked as hokey, even cartoonish. Bavarians themselves take pride in their status as a “free state,” a historic relic that carries little real-world significance but that has nonetheless convinced Bavarians that they are distinct from the rest of the country. 

Like his home region, Söder also has something of the poseur about him. 

In beer-soaked, Catholic Bavaria, he’s a Lutheran who prefers Diet Coke to a cool lager. Then there’s the question of whether he’s even a true Bavarian. 

Söder, whose parents ran a small construction business, was born and grew up in Nuremberg, a city in Franconia. While the region has belonged to Bavaria for about two centuries, neither the locals, nor people elsewhere in the state, consider it real Bavaria (“Who are the Franconians? Certainly not Bavarians,” the Munich-based Süddeutsche Zeitung once concluded).

In Söder’s case, none of that has dampened his appeal. Nor has the fact that before marrying, he fathered a daughter out of wedlock with a woman he met in a tanning salon. While there’s nothing untoward about such stories, Söder’s history of preaching family values made the revelations, which emerged years ago, somewhat awkward. 

But consistency is not something voters appear to expect from Söder. 

Pivots and reversals

After the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis, Söder’s first instinct was to try to overtake the party on the right, mimicking its rhetoric and style. The strategy was a disaster and he soon pivoted, opting instead to brand the AfD as a dangerous force reminiscent of Germany’s darkest days, a tack that has been more successful.

He did a similar reversal on the Greens. For years, Söder parodied the Greens as long-haired leftists who would destroy Germany’s postwar economic miracle. After seeing how strong the party has become in Bavaria, especially in urban areas, Söder changed his tune, recently calling a potential coalition with the Greens at the federal level an “interesting political opportunity.” 

During the pandemic, Bavaria has performed no better than most of the rest of Germany and worse than many regions. Nonetheless, the perception of most Germans is that Söder was more decisive in his handling of the crisis than Laschet, whose state is of similar size. While infection and death rates in Laschet’s state are on par with those in Bavaria, his flip-flopping on lockdown policies and other restrictions earned him a reputation for being a weak leader.   

Laschet’s camp has tried hard in recent days to poke holes in Söder’s perception-is-reality strategy for winning the candidacy. They argue that polls are just “snapshots in time.” That would be more convincing if Söder’s poll numbers — in one survey this week, he overtook Merkel as Germany’s most popular politician — hadn’t been consistently high for so long and Laschet’s so weak. 

That strong appeal is why even if Laschet secures the candidacy, Söder will emerge victorious. If Laschet loses on election day, Söder would be the obvious choice to lead the alliance next time. But even if Laschet wins, Söder can just remain in Bavaria, where he is as popular as ever. Indeed, his audacious bid for the candidacy will only bolster his reputation at home.

Across Germany, Söder is probably best known for his elaborate costumes during Germany’s annual Carnival celebrations. It’s when he’s playing the clown that Söder is most revealing. A few years ago, he arrived at a party dressed as Marilyn Monroe. The future of the male-dominated CSU was female, he joked.

“Besides, Marilyn is a cult figure and maybe I am too,” he confided.    

Nette Nöstlinger contributed reporting.