DAccording to a media report, CDU politician Wolfgang Schäuble, who died at the end of 2023, was pressured by former CSU leader Edmund Stoiber during the refugee crisis in 2015 to overthrow then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) in the refugee crisis. According to an advance report in the magazine “Stern” on Wednesday, this emerges from Schäuble’s memoirs.
According to the report, Schäuble mentions a name for the first time in connection with plans for a coup during the refugee crisis in 2015. Stoiber became active “and encouraged (Horst) Seehofer, his successor in the prime minister's office, in his attacks against Merkel,” according to the report in Schäuble's still unpublished memoirs about the tensions within the Union. “And he wanted to persuade me to overthrow Merkel in order to become chancellor myself.”
“I firmly refused. As was the case with (Helmut) Kohl decades before, I remained convinced that the fall of our own chancellor could only harm our party in the long term without really solving the problem,” continues according to “Stern”. That was his understanding of loyalty.
“The debate amused me”
According to the report, Schäuble had already reported on plans to overthrow Merkel on the ZDF program “Markus Lanz” in December 2022, but did not mention any names. In his memoirs, according to “Stern” he says: “The whole debate almost amused me a little, because I knew my age, had been paraplegic for more than a quarter of a century and had overall poor health.”
Schäuble died on December 26th at the age of 81. He has been a member of the Bundestag since 1972, was the Union parliamentary group leader, was a federal minister several times and was President of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021.