The Merzgefallenen

I. A Word with Two Histories

There have been Märzgefallene, “March fallen”, twice in German history. In 1848 the name was given to those killed on the Berlin barricades on 18 and 19 March, who died for freedom and parliament. Their cemetery lies in Friedrichshain. In 1933 the word took on a mocking sense. After the Reichstag election of 5 March so many people joined the Nazi party that it imposed a membership freeze from 1 May. Whoever came now came not out of conviction but because the wind had turned.

We borrow the word, and we say exactly for what. We mean neither the dead of 1848, nor do we equate anyone with the fellow travellers of 1933. We borrow the mechanism: loyalty that follows the situation and not conviction. It switches to the stronger side when that side grows stronger, and it falls apart on the weaker side as soon as staying no longer pays. Our title, Merzgefallene, puns on the chancellor’s name: those in whom this mechanism can be observed right now.

II. What Happened This Autumn

On 6 September Saxony-Anhalt voted. According to the provisional result the AfD won 43.8 per cent; the CDU fell from 37 to 17.2 per cent. Its group shrank from 40 to 15 members. Sven Schulze, the acting minister-president, was elected group leader by eight votes to seven.

A month later the new state parliament elected Tobias Rausch as Germany’s first AfD parliamentary president, with 48 votes, nine more than the AfD itself has. The CDU group had announced it would abstain. According to ZDF, however, only five of the 14 CDU members present abstained. The vote was secret.

On 20 September the CDU, with 4.9 per cent, was thrown out of a state parliament for the first time ever, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. At the end of May the CDU member Thomas Diener had already left his group there. In June, according to reports by the AfD group, he joined it. In March in Baden-Württemberg the new minister-president Cem Özdemir received, in a secret ballot, 19 votes fewer than his Green–CDU coalition has members. And Michael Kretschmer, CDU minister-president of Saxony, said in July: “Whoever still talks about firewalls has not recognised the signs of the times.”

Nationally the AfD leads in all the major polls, with INSA at 30 to 18 per cent ahead of the CDU/CSU. In the ARD Deutschlandtrend ten per cent each are satisfied with the government and the chancellor, fewer than ever.

III. The Lever

Article 38 of the Basic Law makes members of parliament “representatives of the whole people, not bound by orders or instructions and responsible only to their conscience”. A party whip that punishes dissenters is therefore unconstitutional. So says an opinion of the Bundestag’s research service. Only party discipline is permitted, and according to the same opinion it rests on voluntariness. What is permitted, however, is not to nominate a dissenter again next time.

That is the real lever. Discipline is not ordered; it is paid for: with the next place on the list, the next nomination in the constituency, the committee chair, the junior minister’s post, provision after the mandate. In the CDU/CSU more than eighty per cent of members of the Bundestag enter parliament through a direct constituency seat. For them the lever sits in the local party association that nominates them. In the AfD it is the other way round; most of its members come in through the list.

And since the new electoral law even the constituency seat depends on the party’s strength. A constituency winner takes his seat only if his party has enough second votes. In 2025, 23 constituency winners got nothing. When the party sinks, the value of every nomination sinks, on the list and in the constituency alike.

The mercenary armies of the early modern period knew this law. “No money, no Swiss,” the French said of their Swiss troops. An army that fights for pay holds together as long as the pay comes. If it fails, the army drifts away or changes sides. The once sharp sword grows blunt, not because the blade has become worse, but because nobody pays any longer to wield it.

IV. The Firewall as a Balance-Sheet Item

The same law explains why the firewall against the AfD is crumbling precisely where the CDU is weakest. For many, though not all, it was never only a conviction. It was also a calculation. Whoever worked with the AfD lost the support of the federal party, the prospect of a post in Berlin, the voters in the West and the goodwill of the media. As long as the party was strong, this price outweighed any possible gain.

In Saxony-Anhalt the calculation has reversed. A CDU with 17 per cent and 15 members has little to offer its people. The AfD with 43.8 per cent has a great deal to offer: majorities, offices, perhaps a future. That only five of 14 CDU members followed the announced abstention proves nothing on its own. But it shows how little the group’s word still weighs when nobody can see how the individual votes.

A wall that holds only as long as it pays is not a wall. It is a price tag.

V. The Rational Management of the Mandate

One can reproach the members for this, but one must first understand it. In “The Long March through the Party” we described how in Germany there is only one way into parliament, the long march through the party. Whoever has taken it has often invested twenty years and no longer has another profession. For him the mandate is not an honorary office but an asset, and whoever is clever manages it.

As long as the party is rising, clever management means: keep discipline, do not stand out, wait for the next list. In “The Revolt of the Voting Cattle of the Voting Cattle Is Being Rehearsed” we wrote that the revolt therefore remains a rehearsal. Whoever wants to be on the next list is nominated not for having voted freely but for not having stood out.

When the party sinks, clever management changes. The next list place is worth little, perhaps nothing. Then it pays to go one’s own way, to seek one’s own alliances or to change sides. The rehearsal becomes the real thing. But not in the way Article 38 means. The free mandate returns, not as conscience but as a free market. Democracy becomes secondary in the process. It is the framework in which the business takes place, not its purpose.

VI. Who the Merzgefallenen Are

The word carries more than one meaning, and all are intended. Merzgefallen are those who fall with the chancellor and his party: the 25 CDU members in Saxony-Anhalt who lost their seats, the whole group in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Merzgefallen are those who fall away from him because staying no longer pays, openly like Diener or under the protection of the secret ballot. And in the end the voters who believed him when he announced he would halve the AfD may also be among the fallen.

It is also fair to record that Merz did not cause the decline alone. He inherited it and accelerated it. The name stands for a situation, not for a guilt.

VII. What Speaks for the Members

A fair text must make the other side strong. Members of parliament are not saints but people with families, loans and a profession they have often given up. One cannot demand that they sacrifice themselves for a sinking party. And many hold their line out of conviction, even when it costs them. In Saxony-Anhalt, according to reports, all CDU members have assured their leader in writing that they will not vote for the AfD candidate for minister-president.

And there is a serious democratic argument against the wall itself. When almost 44 per cent of a state’s voters choose a party, excluding it from any cooperation is also a problem of representation. Whoever votes with the AfD can claim to be following the will of the voters. This objection must be taken seriously. But it loses its force when the same member defended the wall as long as it served him and discovers the voters’ will only now that the wall harms him.

VIII. How This Essay Could Be Refuted

The essay claims that discipline and the firewall fall apart where they no longer pay. That can be tested, and the test is imminent. In December the AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund intends to stand for election as minister-president of Saxony-Anhalt. He lacks three votes. The ballot is secret.

If all 15 CDU members keep their written promise, although their party can hardly offer them anything any more, then this essay is refuted, and we will gladly say so. Then there would be more conviction in the CDU than the calculation suggests.

IX. What Follows

A parliament whose members live off the well-being of their party is as stable as the party. If it rises, the members obey. If it sinks, they scatter. In both cases what decides is not the conscience that Article 38 means.

That is why in “Mandate without a Place” and in the “Concept Paper for People’s Representatives” (both in German) we proposed members of parliament who do not enter parliament through a party and therefore do not depend on one. They would be neither mercenaries nor voting cattle. They would have no pay to lose.

X. The Price Tag

The firewall and party discipline crumble for the same reason. For too many, both were never a conviction but a business, and a business ends when it no longer pays.

A democracy that relies on walls that hold only as long as they pay has no walls. It has price tags.