Sven Schulze: How the CDU is fighting for its future

Sven Schulze arrived in a large ministerial car. Sepp Müller followed later on an electric scooter. The contrasting entrances at a business park outside Magdeburg captured the unusual intensity of the power struggle now opening inside Saxony-Anhalt’s CDU.

Schulze, the state premier, drove to the meeting of the CDU state executive in a plain-looking industrial area. He put on his jacket and entered an externally ungainly start-up center chosen as the venue. Müller, who had openly attacked Schulze before election day, arrived shortly afterward, his sweater tied around his waist.

The staging reflected a deeper conflict. After the party’s electoral debacle, Müller’s challenge for the state party chairmanship has triggered a dispute over leadership and direction. At its center stands the CDU’s relationship with the AfD, as well as the question of how openly the party is willing to confront its own internal divisions.

Schulze said after the election that the CDU had received “no mandate to govern.” Yet, as the party confronts its loss of power, he has not completely stepped aside. Müller’s revolt is forcing the leadership question into the open and exposing how uncertain the party’s further development has become.

The article presents the struggle as more than a local contest. The conflict in Saxony-Anhalt offers a revealing picture of the pressures facing the CDU as it weighs its future course and the limits of the self-damage it is prepared to accept.

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No mandate to govern