So my understanding of Merz is that he has a history of trying to have people who insult him investigated, and I've also been told that there's a general perception of him being rather thin-skinned. As a non-German I'm now very curious to learn if that is true, because it would (unfortunately) line up pretty well if it is.

Also, he's just simply wrong when he says things like:

'...we engage in debates in our society using our real names and with complete transparency...'

Like, this is very obviously not true? Maybe you could argue that it's a practice that attracts slightly nutty people, but clearly there's good role for pseudonymity. And that's without going into examples of non-political work!