CDU Names Bavarian Politician Ilse Aigner as Presidential Candidate, Positioning Her to Become Germany's First Female Head of State

Shortly after one in the afternoon on Monday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz stood next to Ilse Aigner at a press conference in the CDU's Konrad Adenauer House in Berlin and announced that his party would put her forward as its candidate for Germany's next head of state. If she is elected, she will be the first woman to hold the office. Germany had Angela Merkel as its most powerful politician for more than a decade, but it has never had a female president.

The CDU's steering committee had settled on Aigner after a period of gathering momentum. Reports that Merz would propose her first emerged on Friday, and participants confirmed them when the party leadership met for two days of talks that reached Sunday. Aigner's own party, the Bavarian CSU, already backed her. It had lobbied for the 13th post-war president to be both the first from its ranks and the first woman. Merz and other government politicians had said for some time that they favored a female candidate.

Merz chose his words carefully about the date. November 9, he said, is "multifaceted" and "ambivalent": the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and also of the Nazi-led November pogroms. In his telling it stands for democratic hope and regained freedom, and equally for the failure of democracy and the gravest crimes in German history that followed from it. He said he and Aigner had known each other for decades, and he praised her empathy, her openness and her pronounced commitment to parliamentary democracy. Germany, he said, would gain a president with dignity and heart, one who would unite, provide orientation and start debates.

Aigner said she was very moved and thanked people inside the conservative camp and beyond for their support in recent weeks. She framed her candidacy against the strength of populist parties on both the right and the left. "This broad, nationwide support, across party lines, is really extraordinary," she said, adding that it humbled and emboldened her. "Ultimately, I want to be the candidate of this strong center." She said the country was under attack from within and without, with divisions stoked and consensus devalued. She described herself as in politics to bridge gaps and to reach people who feel left out, promising clear, easily understood language and the closeness to ordinary people that she said has marked her career.

Aigner is 61 and currently speaker of the Bavarian state parliament, a post she has held since 2018. She is the youngest of four sisters and the daughter of an electrician, and she worked in the family business in her early adult life before entering politics. She is Roman Catholic, single and has no children. Her parliamentary career began in the Bavarian legislature in 1994. She moved to the Bundestag in 1998 and returned to the Bavarian chamber in 2013. Under Merkel she served five years as federal agriculture minister.

The path to the office runs through the Bundesversammlung, the special convention that elects the president. It has 1,260 members, drawn from federal and state lawmakers and, at times, municipal officials and others from public life. Frank-Walter Steinmeier's second five-year term ends next March, so the body meets in late January to choose his successor. The Social Democrats, Merz's federal coalition partner, have said they would endorse Aigner if the conservatives agree on her, and their leader and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil has voiced support. The CDU/CSU and SPD together command a majority in the convention, and some Green politicians may back her too.

Barring unexpected developments, that arithmetic makes her election look strong. The vote in late January is the next date to watch.