Olaf Scholz, 63, is on the brink of succeeding Angela Merkel as the chancellor of Germany. The politician from the Social Democratic Party is often described to be austere, even robotic. At the beginning of the campaign, many wrote off Scholz’s chances of becoming chancellor. Scholz, however, not only managed to beat Merkel’s conservatives but, he avoided making any embarrassing mistakes as his rivals did, while they campaigned.
In the 1980s, he rose to the position of vice-president of the SPD’s youth movement but was unable to become its leader due to criticism that he was too left-wing, but he later shifted to a more moderate position.
Scholz was voted to the national parliament in 1998 after training as a lawyer and launching his labour law practice in 1985 — now without the hair.
During his time as SPD general secretary from 2002 to 2004, he gained the moniker ‘Scholzomat’ for his dry yet indefatigable defence of then-chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's unpopular labour reforms.
Despite his dissatisfaction with the moniker, Scholz conceded in a recent interview with Bunte magazine that "it wasn't altogether an inaccurate description".
Scholz was the mayor of Hamburg from 2011-2018, during which he oversaw the construction of the beloved Elbphilharmonie concert venue, which he rescued with a contentious multi-million-euro bailout. Scholz is married to Britta Ernst, an SPD politician.
Scholz, as finance minister and vice-chancellor under Merkel from 2018, also violated Germany's prized constitutional debt brake to unleash a trillion-euro "bazooka" to combat the consequences of the coronavirus outbreak on the economy.
He is, nevertheless, widely regarded as a fiscal conservative who has insisted on a return to the coalition agreement's no additional debt policy by 2023.
Because of his cautious stance, he has been marginalised inside his own workers' party, with two relatively unknown left-wingers winning the leadership elections in 2019.
However, in this year's election campaign, the SPD was able to rally behind him as its chancellor candidate.
