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rose through the party ranks, becoming
general secretary in 2002.
Although he left Parliament for
a successful seven years as mayor of
Hamburg, the city where he grew up,
he returned in 2018. He was serving as
vice chancellor and finance minister in
the “grand coalition” government that
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union
(CDU) had formed with the SPD, when
she announced she would be retir-
ing in 2021. Scholz lost his initial bid
to become party leader, but his robust
response as finance minister to the
COVID-19 pandemic—as well as a sim-
ple campaign theme of “respect” that
resonated with working-class voters—
helped him regain the top spot and, with
it, the chancellery. If it’s daunting to fill
the shoes of a leader in power for so longthat she was affectionately nicknamed
“Mutti,” he doesn’t admit it.
Like his predecessor, Scholz is tightly
guarded about his personal life. Over
the course of two hours with TIME, he
divulges few details: he played the oboe
as a child, he didn’t have an Easter break
because of the war, and he took up run-
ning in his 40s on the advice of his wife,
fellow SPD politician Britta Ernst. He
otherwise spends what little free time
he has reading history books and news-
papers. Government spokesperson Stef-
fen Hebestreit jokes that he rarely has
to give his boss a press review in the
morning. “When he comes in, he’s al-
ready read everything.”
If the media’s heavy criticism of his
handling of the war made for a tough
morning the day we meet, the Chan-
cellor doesn’t show it. It’s fitting for a
man whose dry communication style
earned him the moniker “Scholzomat”
(as in, Scholz the automaton). In this,
Scholz shares another key similarity△
Scholz receives a standing ovation
after his speech to the German
Parliament on Feb. 27with Merkel, Haider says. “He is not a
great communicator. He works hard and
prefers to speak out only when there is
something to say.” Unlike many politi-
cians who woo voters with rhetoric and
charm, Scholz has never been one for
effusive expression or even the clear
explanation of his actions. If Volody-
myr Zelensky is Europe’s great orator,
Scholz is his opposite: reserved instead
of emotive, methodical instead of spon-
taneous, and reticent to the point of
opacity about his decision making.
His supporters find his combination
of work ethic, knowledge, and restraint
reassuring. Comparing the Chancellor
with his British counterpart Boris John-
son, SPD lawmaker Adis Ahmetovic
observes that while Johnson is “a per-
former, an entertainer, Olaf Scholz is
a leader.” And the Chancellor cites his
electoral success as proof that his un-
derstated approach works. “The first
rule for a politician is to be yourself,”
he says. “Leadership needs to be clear,
to have a course, an idea about where
the country has to go.”
Scholz’s idea of where the nation
should go is, of course, shaped by
where it has been. “Living in Germany,
you can’t go away from the disasters of
the first half of the 20th century, which
were caused by Germany. It is in all the
things we do politically, and it is in my
mind too, because we have a historic re-
sponsibility to help secure peace.” For
Germany, that means learning to think
beyond itself to the broader collective.
“We should be the nation that is willing
to find the European solutions that are
good for all, not just for our country.”In the weeks before the Russian inva-
sion, Scholz was criticized for not doing
enough. Behind the scenes, he says he
was preparing to respond to a Russian
invasion. On Feb. 15, the Chancellor
flew to Moscow in a last-ditch attempt
to avert war. Describing that meeting as
a “very bad experience,” Scholz says he
pushed back as Putin expounded on his
ideas of a “greater Russia.” “I was say-
ing: ‘Please understand, if politicians
start to look at history books for where
borders were before, we would be at war
for hundreds of years.’ ”
Younger Europeans might take for
HANNIBAL HANSCHKE—GETTY IMAGES granted the international order that