"Georg Günther, ich grüsse Sie!"

At the end of February 2021, 33-year-old Georg Günther will be elected as the CDU's direct candidate for the "Vorpommern-Rügen / Vorpommern-Greifswald I" constituency. This is constituency 15 on the coast of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which the CDU has always won since reunification, which has secured Angela Merkel a seat in the Bundestag eight times in a row since 1990 and which the former Chancellor calls her political home. Now she is no longer standing in the 2021 Bundestag elections and Georg Günther wants to win the mandate for Berlin in September '21. As a local politician from the municipality of Süderholz, he knows the country, its tasks and its population and would like to bring more regional concerns to the Bundestag. But it's a long way to Berlin and the expectations of Georg are high, the media interest in the "Merkel heir" is huge and Angela Merkel seems to be omnipresent. But Georg bravely and steadfastly goes his own way, brushes off questions about the "succession to the throne" and declares that he wants to do politics. A photo reportage about his election campaign.

Having been commissioned to photograph Georg Günther for DER SPIEGEL, I accompanied him from the end of February to the end of September 2021.