In September 2024, Olaf Scholz brushed aside a journalist's question about his legacy. "I think you should be wary of politicians who think about that before their term in office has ended," he told Berlin's Tagesspiegel newspaper in response to the question of what he hoped would one day be written in the history books about his chancellorship.

Two months later, following the collapse of his center-left three-way coalition, he may be beginning to ponder the question. So far, the leadership of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) is publicly demonstrating support for Scholz as their top candidate for the upcoming election on February 23, 2025. But with Scholz's low popularity ratings and the election campaign already hotting up, calls in the party are reportedly getting louder to replace Scholz with 64-year-old Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, who has been the most popular politician in Germany in polls for months.

If, as predicted, the center-right bloc of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) takes over the chancellorship, Scholz will have had the shortest term of office of any of the four chancellors of the SPD in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany.

But Scholz is determined to win. In view of the current polls, which show the SPD only half as strong as the CDU/CSU, this is will be a real challenge.

Having said that, Scholz has never lacked self-confidence. Even in seemingly hopeless situations, he always fervently believed he had everything........

© Deutsche Welle