Yet there is another, more surprising Merz — one I have encountered over years on the international circuit, in brief conversations, small dinners and events where, once he loosens his tie, a more personable character emerges. 

When we first met, at a dinner in 2022 to discuss Germany’s laggardly response to the war in Ukraine, I pressed Merz — then opposition leader — on why he had not pushed then Chancellor Olaf Scholz harder to send longer-range weapons to Kyiv. His answer was evasive. Over a glass of Sekt afterwards, I risked saying so. 

It could have gone either way. Merz can end conversations sharply if he feels he is being treated badly. But he can also have a wry charm. He joked that I was being “very testing,” before explaining that he did not want to appear to be backseat-driving the government as the conflict intensified. 

I had another go when our paths crossed at an Airbus factory in the U.K. in 2025, where he appeared with then Prime Minister Keir Starmer — who, to Merz’s amusement, called him simply “Friedrich,” an informality unusual in German politics. Again, Merz wavered on the sensitive question of supplying Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Again, I pressed him on the omission. 

He saw the funny side. “You again!” he observed the next time we met. 

There was another glimpse of that Merz when I asked whether he planned to congratulate former Chancellor Angela Merkel on her birthday. The question forced him into elaborate good wishes for the predecessor with whom he has had a famously testy relationship, after she bested him in the struggle for control of the CDU and, in his view, steered the party too far to the left.