Angela Merkel's centre-right CDU will choose a new leader at a special congress in April or May, sources said on Monday, as the party scrambles to prepare for the veteran German chancellor's departure.
Merkel's initial heir apparent, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, resigned as party leader this month over a scandal involving apparent cooperation with the far right.
The surprise move threw open the race to succeed Merkel, who has been in power for more than 14 years and plans to bow out at the next general elections in 2021.
The Christian Democratic Union's extraordinary party congress in spring should anoint a new chairman, who would then be almost sure to become the party's candidate for chancellor.
Kramp-Karrenbauer -- widely known as "AKK" -- held talks with party grandees on Monday with the CDU still in crisis mode.
On Sunday, the party suffered its second-worst result ever in a regional election, coming third in Hamburg with just 11.5 per cent of the vote.
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It is also engulfed in an internal debate as to how it should position itself against the extremes of right and left that have reshaped the nation's political landscape.
After barely a year as head of the party, AKK announced her resignation on February 10.
It came after regional lawmakers in the eastern state of Thuringia defied an edict from Berlin not to ally with the extremes, by voting with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
It was the latest sign that the defence minister had failed to stamp her authority on the CDU and become a credible candidate to succeed Merkel.
AKK initially planned a quick departure, hoping to elevate a successor who would also lead the party into the 2021 election.
But her experience lays bare the challenge for her successor -- how to make their mark while the phenomenally popular Merkel remains in office as chancellor.
In the starting blocks are two politicians who promise to break with Merkel's centrist course and lead the CDU rightwards, in a bid to win back voters from AfD.
While Friedrich Merz recently described her fourth government as "abysmal", young Health Minister Jens Spahn is a rising party star.
Facing them are two more moderate candidates: North Rhine-Westphalia state premier Armin Laschet and Norbert Roettgen, a former environment minister dismissed by Merkel in 2012.
The choice of leader will set the tone for the future of a party that has dominated German politics since the federal republic was founded in 1949.
Polls highlight the urgent need for action, as only 27 per cent say they would back the CDU, ahead of 23 per cent for the Greens and 14 percent for the far right.
Beyond the high-profile personalities, the conservatives also need to clarify what they stand for in an increasingly splintered political landscape that hinders stable majorities, be it in Berlin or the 16 state parliaments.
Top of the list is whether the CDU will stick to its rigid policy of refusing to cooperate with either the far right or the far left, an increasingly difficult position to maintain.
Thuringia is a textbook case, as last year's regional elections produced no clear governing majority following a surge by the AfD.
CDU state lawmakers voted with the far right, breaching a historic political taboo, to install a liberal state premier.
But after a nationwide outcry, the regional CDU retreated -- only to be publicly rebuked by Berlin chiefs for its plan to "tolerate" a minority government led by radical-left successors of the one-party state in communist East Germany.
Der Spiegel magazine labelled the CDU's zig-zagging "self-destruction" by "a party without direction or a strategic centre".
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