Christian Democratic Union (Germany) in the context of "Friedrich Merz"

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer (5 January 1876 – 19 April 1967) was a German statesman and politician who served as the first chancellor of West Germany from 1949 to 1963. From 1946 to 1966, he was the first leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a newly founded Christian democratic party, which became the dominant force in the country under his leadership.

As a devout Catholic, Adenauer was a leading politician of the Catholic Centre Party in the Weimar Republic, serving as Mayor of Cologne (1917–1933) and as president of the Prussian State Council. In the early years of the Federal Republic, he switched focus from denazification to recovery, and led his country to close relations with France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. During his years in power, he worked to restore the West German economy from the destruction of World War II to a central position in Europe with a market-based liberal democracy, stability, international respect and economic prosperity.

The Federal Republic of Germany has a plural multi-party system. Historically, the largest by members and parliament seats are the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with its sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). Germany also has a number of other parties, in recent history most importantly the Free Democratic Party (FDP), Alliance 90/The Greens, The Left, and more recently the Alternative for Germany (AfD). The federal government of Germany often consisted of a coalition of a major and a minor party, specifically CDU/CSU and FDP or SPD and FDP, and from 1998 to 2005 SPD and Greens. From 1966 to 1969, from 2005 to 2009, from 2013 to 2021 and since 2025, the federal government consisted of a coalition of the two major parties, called a grand coalition.

Coalitions in the Bundestag and state legislatures are often described by party colors. Party colors are red for the Social Democratic Party, green for Alliance 90/The Greens, yellow for the Free Democratic Party, purple (officially red, which is customarily used for the SPD) for the Left, light blue for the AfD, and black and blue for the CDU and CSU respectively.

"There is no alternative" (TINA) is a political slogan originally arguing that liberal capitalism is the only viable system. At the turn of the 21st century the TINA rhetoric became closely tied to neoliberalism, and its traits of liberalization and marketization. Politicians used it to justify policies of economic liberalism (or fiscal conservatism) and austerity. The slogan is strongly associated with the policies and persona of Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party during the 1980s, and, as German: alternativlos, with Angela Merkel, who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 until 2021.

Researchers of populism generally agree that its growth since the 1990s is the result of political elites accepting certain concepts (like free market) as unalterable truths and the associated disappearance of the political discord (so-called post-politics). This created a virtual "party cartel", where the views of established parties did not differ on policies. A rise in dissatisfaction with these policies coupled with a lack of opposition to them by mainstream parties has led to the rise of new populist parties, such as Alternative for Germany and Viktor Orbán's post-2016 version of Fidesz in Hungary.

Roman Herzog (German: [ˈʁoːman ˈhɛʁtsoːk] ; 5 April 1934 – 10 January 2017) was a German politician, judge and legal scholar, who served as President of Germany from 1994 to 1999. A member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he was the first president to be elected after German reunification. He previously served as a judge of the Federal Constitutional Court, and he was president of the court 1987–1994. Before his appointment as a judge he was a professor of law. He received the 1997 Charlemagne Prize.

Birgitta Wolff (born 14 July 1965 in Münster) is a German economist and politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). She served as minister of education and culture and as minister of research and economy in the state government of Saxony-Anhalt from 2010 to 2013, and as president of the Goethe University Frankfurt from 2015 to 2020.

Manfred Rommel (24 December 1928 – 7 November 2013) was a German politician belonging to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), who served as mayor of Stuttgart from 1974 until 1996. Rommel's policies were described as tolerant and liberal, and he was one of the most popular municipal politicians in Germany. He was the recipient of numerous foreign honours. He was the only son of Wehrmacht Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his wife Lucia Maria Mollin (1894–1971), and contributed to the establishment of museums in his father's honour. He was also known for his friendship with George Patton IV and David Montgomery, the sons of his father's two principal military adversaries.