Controversies
In 2018, Friedrich Merz rejected the Ludwig Erhard Prize, based on objections to the publications of the chairman of the board of the Ludwig Erhard Foundation, Roland Tichy. Critics describe Tichy's online magazine Tichys Einblick (Tichy's Insight) of right-wing extremism. Four members of the jury, Rainer Hank, Ulric Papendick, Nikolaus Piper and Ursula Weidenfeld, resigned following Merz' decision. The four accused Tichy of using the foundation to boost the reputation of his own publications. Two other members of the jury, Thomas Mayer und Frank Schäffler, spoke in support of Tichy. Schäffler saw "a struggle within Liberalism between supporters and opponents of Merkel's political course, both in the European debt crisis and in the migration debate."
On 23 September 2020, Dorothee Bär resigned from the foundation in protest against the chairperson Roland Tichy, whose online magazine Tichys Einblick had published an article about the state secretary of Berlin, Sawsan Chebli, that Bär viewed as sexist. Bär said that she can no longer support the foundation, as long as it has "a chairperson, under whose direction such articles can be published."
Following the controversy, German health minister Jens Spahn and the deputy chairperson of the CDU/CSU, Carsten Linnemann, announced that they were pausing their membership in the foundation. The next day, Tichy declared that he would step down at the end of his term as chairperson, at the end of October. Foundation member Jens Weidmann, who had expressed strong criticism of Tichy in a letter to the other members of the foundation, greeted Tichy's resignation, saying that Tichy's role as publicist was not compatible with his role as chairperson of the foundation.
