Party hopes ‘Sankt Martin’ will bring them victory, first in Saarland on Sunday then in Germany’s federal elections in September

Nelson Radames-Strube is a little overwhelmed by all the attention. The 14-year-old is the youngest of new recruits to the Berlin branch of the Social Democrats (SPD) and has been called on to the stage at a welcome party for the newcomers.



He had watched the party’s new leader, Martin Schulz, giving a speech on television after Angela Merkel and decided to join. “I found him more convincing than her, so that’s why I’m here,” he said. “I think he can bring order to the party and to Germany”.

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The arrival of “Sankt Martin”, as he has been dubbed, has already seen the SPD, after nearly two decades in which it has haemorrhaged support, boosting the number of its card-carrying members by thousands, while polls have shown voter support has risen by about 10 points.

Even three months ago it would have hardly have seemed possible to seriously contemplate anyone having a chance of beating Merkel. But Schulz, a former president of the European parliament, whose only political role in Germany so far has been that of a provincial mayor, is being seen as a very credible successor in the 24 September federal elections.

Unprecedented in the party’s 153-year history, Schulz received 100% of the votes at a special party conference last Sunday. Kurt Schumacher, the party’s popular postwar leader, only managed to secure 99.71%.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Schulz welcomes new member Nelson-Ramades Strube to the party. Photograph: Clemens Bilan/EPA

The euphoria the party is feeling across the country at the change in its fortunes was on display in Berlin as 500 new members gathered to celebrate Schulz on Wednesday evening at Festsaal Kreuzberg, a popular cultural venue in the south-east of the capital.

Wearing T-shirts and badges emblazoned with the 61-year-old’s bespectacled, bearded face and the slogan “Time for Martin”, members greeted him like a pop star as he entered the room to chants of “Martin, Martin!” Some carried balloons printed with the words “A breath of fresh air”.

The party is hoping that the so-called “Schulz Effekt” will work its magic when elections take place this weekend in Saarland, Germany’s smallest state. Although home to just 1 million people, it is being seen as something of a miniature Germany where its well-liked 54-year-old conservative prime minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is a leader very much in the Merkel mould.

The vote is the first electoral test for the resurgent SPD under Schulz’s leadership and its result could offer a foretaste of the federal election when Merkel stands for a fourth term.

Campaigning in the state, Schulz was able to emphasise the man-of-the-people image he has been keen to promote by dropping in on his own relatives for a cup of coffee.

He has stressed the importance, to him, of social justice – Gerechtigkeit – which has become his campaign buzzword. At a time when the widening wealth gap is making itself increasingly felt, he has promised that if elected he will make amendments to Agenda 2010, the labour market reforms introduced by one of his predecessors, Gerhard Schröder, that were largely responsible for the party’s popularity dive.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chips and sausages fortify Martin Schulz on the campaign trail in the state of Saarland. Photograph: Thomas Lohnes/Getty Images

Saarland, a former coalmining region on the border with France, which has recreated itself as a relatively successful research and IT hub, has been ruled by the Christian Democrats (CDU) since the mid-1950s, alone or in coalition, except for a 13-year period when it was run byOskar Lafontaine, a politician who switched from the SPDto the far-left Die Linke and campaigned under the slogan: “We’ve paid enough – now it’s the turn of the rich.”

The SPD in Saarland is between only one and five points behind the CDU, in contrast to the 12-point lead the conservatives enjoyed in January. If the SPD won under its candidate, the 40-year-old economic affairs minister – and record-holding shot putter – Anke Rehlinger, it would hope to join forces with Die Linke and the Greens (Die Grünen), a so-called red-red-green formation that also has the potential to work on the national level.

A threat to both mainstream parties is the rightwing populist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which, despite experiencing a drop in support recently, is expected to enter Saarland’s parliament for the first time, thereby gaining representation in 11 of Germany’s 16 states.

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Schulz, who has been branded a populist but rejects the label, reserves his angriest words for the AfD, calling them “pure and simply a disgrace for Germany”.

On stage, he cuts a surprisingly charismatic figure. He offers a sweeping history lesson of the SPD’s proudest moments, recalling how party members resisted the Enabling Act which gave Adolf Hitler the power, in March 1933, to enact laws without involving parliament, and remembering the historical reconciliatory genuflection of the SPD leader Willy Brandt at the memorial for the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1970.

“Forty-five per cent of people voted for Brandt in 1972 – 45%!” he says. “Can we repeat that?” At which point, the room erupts with enthusiastic applause.