New Chancellor to Take Over in Germany as Merkel Era Ends

A dominant era of German politics is ending on Wednesday as Angela Merkel hands over the chancellery to her successor, opening a new chapter for Europe’s biggest democracy.

For the first time in 16 years, Germany will have a center-left government led by a new chancellor. And that leader, Olaf Scholz, finds himself in the difficult spot of trying to live up to the high expectations set by Ms. Merkel, under whose stewardship Germany became Europe’s leading power for the first time in modern history.

For over a decade, Ms. Merkel steered her country and the continent through a series of crises. She leaves power after a drawn-out goodbye — she announced in 2018 that she would not seek re-election — and as the most popular politician in her nation.

Mr. Scholz, a Social Democrat with ambitions to revive progressive politics across Europe, is set to be sworn in on Wednesday afternoon as Germany’s ninth postwar chancellor.

Unlike his predecessors, Germany’s new chancellor will not enjoy a grace period. Several pressing crises demand his immediate attention, chief among them a pandemic that continues to spiral and the risk of a looming conflict with Russia on the Ukrainian border. Going forward, he will also have to maintain European cohesion in the continuing wake of Britain’s departure from the European Union, and contend with Washington, an ally that has grown less dependable in recent years.

How much of a change Mr. Scholz’s coalition government with the progressive Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats will prove to be is unclear. The Social Democrats governed with Ms. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats for three of her four terms, and Mr. Scholz himself was her finance minister for the past four years, prompting many to expect a degree of continuity.

The transition of power formally taking place on Wednesday was in many ways set in motion when the country held elections in September. Ms. Merkel invited Mr. Scholz to accompany her to a Group of 20 meeting in Rome in October to introduce him to leaders like President Biden. And last week the incoming and departing chancellors jointly presided over a coronavirus emergency meeting with the governors of Germany’s 16 states.

“The transition from Merkel to Scholz is so harmonious that you’ve got to ask: What is it between those two?” the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung posited in a recent article.

During a military farewell ceremony for Ms. Merkel last week, she wished Mr. Scholz — whom she called “Dear Olaf” — “all the best, a lucky hand and much success.” He promptly replied with a compliment of his own on Twitter: “Angela Merkel was a successful chancellor,” he said. “She tirelessly stood up for her country and during 16 years in which a lot changed, stayed true to herself.”

So far at least, the transition has been so harmonious that Germans said they were proud of it.

“We are witnessing a very good democratic transition where there is a basic consensus,” said Christoph Heusgen, Ms. Merkel’s former chief foreign policy adviser, who this week took over the presidency of the Munich Security Conference. “I am a little proud of our democracy the way it’s managed this transition without schadenfreude, without hatred, without malice.”

Olaf Scholz officially takes over the German chancellorship from Angela Merkel on Wednesday, but onlookers shouldn’t expect a U.S.-style inauguration. Rather than pomp and circumstance, the modern German transition of power involves a slew of documents, parliamentary procedure and plenty of commuting.

Although Ms. Merkel was given her departing documents in late October and was bid adieu with a grand military ceremony on Thursday, she remains chancellor until Mr. Scholz is handed his nomination papers by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The day will start with a secret-ballot parliamentary vote on Mr. Scholz’s chancellorship, an exercise that is expected to run roughly along party lines. Because his Social Democrats and the two parties they will be governing with have a total of 416 of the house’s 736 seats, he is likely to get at a majority on the first round of voting.

Once the vote tally is official, Mr. Scholz will be driven roughly a mile west through Berlin’s Tiergarten park to the Bellevue Palace, the German president’s residence. Mr. Steinmeier will give him the nomination document in a leather-bound folder. And although it is then that Mr. Scholz legally becomes chancellor, the transfer of power is not complete until he gets back into his car, heads back east and is sworn in by Parliament’s president, Bärbel Bas.

Ms. Merkel, who no longer has a seat in the Parliament, will be watching from the visitors’ gallery.

Then the members of Mr. Scholz’s cabinet will make a similar dash across the park to get their working documents before traveling back to be sworn in. They will become Germany’s new government after Mr. Steinmeier delivers a speech and a group photo is taken — with added distance because of the pandemic.

The day will end with a symbolic handover of the chancellery, where Ms. Merkel worked for 16 years. There, she is expected to thank her staff before handing over the day-to-day affairs to Mr. Scholz.

BERLIN — For the first time in 16 years, Germany will be run by a man. But although Angela Merkel is handing over the chancellery to a male successor, the incoming cabinet will have more women than ever before. Half, to be exact.

Olaf Scholz, the incoming chancellor, kept his election promise to appoint as many women as men to his government — and not only that, women will run all the briefs related to security and diplomacy.

Germany will have its first female foreign minister and its first female interior minister. It will also get its third female defense minister in a row.

“Security will lie in the hands of strong women in this government,” Mr. Scholz said on Monday. “Women and men account for half the population each, so women should also get half the power,” he added. “I’m very proud that we have succeeded in realizing this.”

That he is doing something Ms. Merkel never achieved herself — gender parity in the cabinet — speaks to the mixed legacy on gender for the departing chancellor, who for over a decade was the most powerful woman in the world.

Ms. Merkel long shunned the word feminist, and until her final years in power rarely publicly promoted the issue of advancement for women. There are notoriously few female business leaders in Germany. And even in politics, where Ms. Merkel has proved a role model for many, the number of female ministers and lawmakers on her watch remained about a third.

Still, many credit her long and popular tenure with the fact that Mr. Scholz and his team felt compelled to endorse gender parity.

“Germany has evolved in the last few years, and Ms. Merkel played a big part in that,” said Jutta Allmendinger, the president of the research institute WZB Berlin Social Science Center and an expert on gender and inequality. “So in a way, Scholz followed the call of the country.”

“Merkel always did her gender politics in secret,” Ms. Allmendinger said. “She is an absolute feminist. The fact that she didn’t proclaim it publicly has to do with the fact that she probably would have lost her power.”

The women taking office this week have made clear that they intend to put their mark on their ministries.

Annalena Baerbock, the new foreign minister, has been vocal about her plan to take a tougher line toward strategic rivals like China and Russia. The incoming interior minister, Nancy Faeser, vowed on Monday to “fight the biggest threat currently facing our liberal democracy: far-right extremism.” And Christine Lambrecht, who will become defense minister, promised to get Germany’s notoriously underequipped military the resources it needs.

Unlike Ms. Merkel, these ministers seem to have no qualms in proclaiming their feminism.

Klara Geywitz, the new minister for housing and urban development, called the gender-equal cabinet “an important signal for all women in our country.”