“It depends on the Chancellor”. The Union’s old election campaign slogan lives on this Friday evening in Ravensburg on Lake Constance. Friedrich Merz enters the Oberschwabenhalle, which is filled with 2,500 spectators, to cheers. It is the fifth time that he is supporting the inexperienced CDU top candidate Manuel Hagel in this exciting election campaign. In the audience there are almost only staunch supporters of the CDU, hardly any undecided people.

But these ultra-fans of Manuel Hagel, including entrepreneurs like Bonita Grupp and Martin Herrenknecht, should once again pass on the good news at the weekend that a capable, smart, young man can credibly inherit the aged Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann. Kretschmann is 77, Hagel is 37 – there is hardly a greater contrast.

Merz with blood and tears speech

And the Greens have caught up in the polls, which creates a bit of gallows humor. “If everyone out of 2,500 people here in the hall speaks to 1,000 people by Sunday, we’ll have 2.5 million votes,” jokes CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann, who even offers the Swabian audience the first name: “You can say Carschten to me.”

But the Union supporters came primarily because of the Chancellor. He should whip her up. But Merz doesn’t give a classic election campaign speech with attacks on his political opponent and punchlines. He presents a very serious little blood, sweat and tears speech.

More stick than carrot. The Germans have to work more, he demands: “Your neighbors, the Swiss, work 200 hours more a year. That’s not because of their genetic disposition. We can’t maintain our prosperity with work-life balance and a four-day week.”

And Merz moved the audience when he talked about a Ukrainian he met at the craft fair, a model of patriotism: “He lost his leg in the war and an eye, but he is now building prostheses for his homeland at a German company.”

Bridges, roads, train stations are needed

Building is Merz’s big theme. Bridges, roads and train stations must be built faster, he demands. “And not be delayed for years because there is some amphibian and a second one is suspected.” Merz recommends that Germans also have to save private money decades earlier for their pension: “Other countries like the Netherlands, Belgium, the Swedes and the Danes show us how to do this, where people sometimes have more money in retirement than they earned while working.”

Merz likes to talk about his successes as foreign chancellor, sometimes in detail: “I told Donald Trump during my visit that we have reduced illegal immigration by over 50 percent: ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said in amazement.”

Merz: “We have to be the locomotive in Europe, not the brakeman”

Trump denies climate change, Merz doesn’t do that: “Yes, there is climate change, we are already seeing the consequences. But we have to fight it with industry, not against industry. We have to be the locomotive in Europe again, not the brakes.”

Death also appears in the Chancellor’s speech: “I didn’t take on this office so that my gravestone would say Chancellor retired. I’m doing this so that my children and grandchildren can live in peace and freedom like we do.”

Hagel: Greens an “anti-business party”

Manuel Hagel also sees it that way. He always refers to his three small children and future generations: “My children will ask me: What did you do to solve the problems?” He doesn’t think they’re in the best of hands with the Greens. “An anti-business party, green politics is destroying jobs in the auto industry. I will fight for everyone and hope that modern combustion engines with methanol will not only be built in India in the future, but here too. Friedrich Merz smelled the exhaust, everything was clean.”

Hagel doesn’t mention his competitor’s name at all; he only addresses him indirectly once. “One person writes ‘experience’ on his poster, I have it. In state politics. All CDU prime ministers were previously parliamentary group leaders – like me.” Özdemir was purely a federal politician, Hagel doesn’t even have to mention that anymore.

Everything has been said – by everyone

Neither Merz nor Hagel brought the hall to a boil; the applause didn’t last more than two minutes. The speeches weren’t fiery enough, the fighting spirit was poor, and no one broke a sweat while speaking. But to offer another brilliant idea on the last evening of the election campaign would probably be asking too much. The election campaigners seemed exhausted. Everything has been said – by everyone.

At the end there is a special gift for Chancellor Merz: a Ravensburg puzzle with the loving picture of his wife, who hugged him from behind at the party conference. Winning the election will be a bigger puzzle. The fear that it would not be enough again was noticeable in the CDU, which had to endure Prime Minister Kretschmann for 15 years. Is hail the savior? He didn’t seem relaxed.