 The Sauvigny family was a prominent patrician family in Brilon, of French Huguenot ancestry; his grandfather Josef Paul Sauvigny was a lawyer and served as mayor of Brilon from 1917 to 1937.After finishing his Abitur exam in 1975 Merz served his military service as a soldier with a self-propelled artillery unit of the German Army.From 1976 he studied law with a scholarship from the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, first at the University of Bonn, later at the University of Marburg.