We are since '89
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30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Angela Merkel rules as Chancellor in her fourth term. Should the CDU politician rule until the end of the legislature in 2021, she would catch up with Helmut Kohl as the longest-serving chancellor.
In the SPIEGEL interview, the 65-year-old tells of the importance of 9 November 1989 and the consequences for her life. About the commitment in the "Democratic departure" she was after the first free People's Chamber elections in March 1990 deputy East German government spokeswoman, later CDU member. After the reunification Merkel successfully ran for the Bundestag in 1990, she became Minister of Women in the Cabinet of her party colleague Kohl.
What would have become of her if the GDR celebrated its 70th anniversary these days? "After all, I could have realized my dream," says Merkel. "In the GDR, the women retired at 60, so I would have picked up my passport five years ago and traveled to America." GDR pensioners enjoyed freedom of travel.
The Chancellor draws a kind of balance of German domestic relations 30 years after the fall of the Wall. She talks about political mistakes and the deficits in the dialogue between East and West, criticizes the debate on freedom of expression, and instead wants more courage. Merkel says about the rise of the AfD in her term of office: "We live in freedom, people can express themselves accordingly and vote." She warns of an approach of the CDU to the Left Party.
SPIEGEL: Germany celebrates 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Assuming that the wall had not fallen and the GDR would celebrate its 70th anniversary these days - what would have become of you?
Merkel: We certainly would not have met, that's for sure.
SPIEGEL: And what would you do today?
Merkel: After all, I could have realized my dream: In the GDR, the women retired at age 60, so I would have picked up my passport five years ago and traveled to America. Pensioners had indeed freedom of travel in the GDR - who was no longer needed as a socialist worker, was allowed out.
SPIEGEL: The USA was your longing country?
Merkel: Of course I would have looked at the Federal Republic correctly. But my first long trip was going to America. Because of the size, variety, culture. Seeing the Rocky Mountains, driving around and listening to Bruce Springsteen - that was my dream.
SPIEGEL: In an American road cruiser?
Merkel: No. I am a friend of smaller cars. But what could have been better than a Trabant?
SPIEGEL: You have complained about previous anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, that so much of your life in the GDR and the days of 1989/1990 "can not be remembered". What does that say about how the former East German citizens dealt with their history?
Merkel: Some things would come to my mind again if I think about it for a long time. But it is just the case that as a GDR citizen after the fall of the Berlin Wall you had to adjust to many things. We had to rethink and some of the skills we had in the GDR were no longer that important in reunified Germany. Many old people were overwritten by the new life. Now, 30 years later, many seem to think about it again and memories come up.
SPIEGEL: And everyone remembers differently - some even seem really nostalgic.
Peter Rigaud / THE MIRROR
Before you start: Angela Merkel pours her coffee into her guests
Merkel: Of course, the view of life in the GDR also depends on where each of us today stands as an East German. Basically, when looking at the GDR there is one thing many West Germans find so difficult to understand: that even in a dictatorship there could be a successful life. So that we had friends and families with whom we celebrated birthdays and Christmas, or shared sadness despite the state, of course always in a certain vigilance before the state. But that we could not travel to America, but only to Hungary and Bulgaria, has not determined every day. Because this side of our personal life in the GDR is not perceived or even ignored by many West Germans, the reaction of some East Germans today sometimes leads to a kind of romanticization, according to the motto: Nobody can take away our life in the GDR.
SPIEGEL: The party atmosphere with a view of the fall of the Berlin Wall seems to be correspondingly low. Why should one also celebrate, when with the AfD in three East German state elections a xenophobic, in part fascist party belongs to the strongest forces?
Merkel: For me, November 9, 1989 is and will remain a moment of fortune in German history. So many people in the GDR had dreamed of freedom between 1949 and 1989 - and suddenly we could talk about it publicly! We could raise our voice. And even today everyone can speak out.
I know that for East Germans of a certain generation life with the peaceful revolution has become free, but not always easier; I also know that in addition to the successful regions, there are also those in which the villages empty themselves, because the children and grandchildren have moved away. Nevertheless, today, 30 years later, it must also be clear: even if one is not satisfied with public transport, medical care, public action or one's own life, no right to hatred and contempt for other people or even follows Violence. There can be no tolerance for such behavior.
SPIEGEL: There are former GDR citizens who compare today's political situation with before 1989. What has happened there?
Merkel: I do not know that. What in my view does not work: If people with West German biography go to the East and claim that our state is actually not much better than the GDR. Since you have to hold hard.
SPIEGEL: It's also former civil rights activists like Vera Lengsfeld who talk that way. And it may happen that someone who was imprisoned in the GDR for conscientious objection says that he is happy to at least have rescued his daughter from today's Germany - she now lives in the USA. Does that make you angry?
Merkel: That's not my point of view.
SPIEGEL: Many East Germans are expressly disappointed in you, which is often expressed in the vote for the AfD. Are you also disappointed with these East Germans?
Merkel: No. I see my task in doing my work for all people in Germany.
SPIEGEL: But is not it bitter that the AfD has become so strong in East Germany during your term of office?
Merkel: We live in freedom, people can speak out and vote accordingly. At the beginning of my political career, I was fourfold a minority in the CDU: young, female, Protestant and East German. Meanwhile, I have been the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany for 14 years and have to serve all people in Germany. The assumption that I should primarily deal with the concerns of the East Germans is therefore wrong - but if you follow her, of course, it leads to disappointment. What I also miss is a better inner German conversation.
SPIEGEL: What do you mean?
Merkel: The different life experiences in East and West are a fact. We should talk more about it and try harder to understand each other.
SPIEGEL: You were 35 when the wall came down. If you could help reunification with knowledge of the post-revolutionary era, what would you do differently?
Merkel: It was really fast back then. And of course mistakes have happened.
Peter Rigaud / THE MIRROR
SPIEGEL editors, Chancellor: "The different life experiences in East and West are a fact"
SPIEGEL: For example?
Merkel: Günther Krause ( 1991-1993 Minister of Transport of the CDU and East German / editor's note ), for example, once had to be very loud, until Klaus Kinkel ( 1991/1992 Minister of Justice of the FDP and West German / Note d .) looked at him in rubber boots with the complicated ownership on site. There was something going on. Klaus Kinkel - so that there is no misunderstanding - I have greatly appreciated. Nevertheless, this story shows a problem of the early days. Basically, I would have wanted more curiosity and interest from the West German politicians. When I was deputy spokeswoman for the last GDR government, for example, the then Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière wanted to make another trip to the Allies. Chancellor Helmut Kohl did not understand that at all; He said there was plenty to do in the country, the unit was coming anyway. But that was important to us.
SPIEGEL: Has the performance of the East Germans on the way to the fall of the Berlin been valued too little?
Merkel: German unity has been co-organized by East and West, and Helmut Kohl's political skill and the trust that he had in the Allies played a major role in that. But the peaceful revolution and 9 November 1989 were the work of the GDR citizens. Of that we like to give something off, even the joy, but have managed that the GDR citizens with a lot of courage. And since I know that in West Germany, not only courage bolts lived at that time - I remember, how it was already too much for some, if they should smuggle us a book across the border for us - one could certainly appreciate that more.
SPIEGEL: There is a lot of debate going on about freedom of expression and its limitations. Does this also have something to do with underestimating in East Germany how exhausting a life in freedom can be?
Merkel: Vaclav Havel wrote very well about parents having to educate their children to live in freedom. Naturally this could hardly take place in the GDR. Sure, that there was a lot of catching up to do and is - also with a view to the freedom of expression. Otherwise, I am of the opinion that we also can not be a society Zuspruchs. Freedom of expression does not mean that there is no opposition.
SPIEGEL: So you do not see the freedom of expression in danger?
Merkel: No. Of course, the AfD founder Bernd Lucke must be able to give a lecture at the University of Hamburg, which must enforce the state if necessary. But the debate goes so well that a so-called mainstream is defined, which is supposedly limits the freedom of expression. But that's just not true. You have to expect to get headwind and peppery counterarguments. Freedom of opinion includes consistency. I encourage everyone to say his or her own opinion, but then you have to endure the demands. And possibly even a so-called shitstorm. I have already experienced that. That is part of democracy. In the old Federal Republic there were at that time still quite different debates, for example in the late 1960s, if I am correctly informed.
Peter Rigaud / THE MIRROR
"You have to expect to get headwind and peppery counterarguments"
SPIEGEL: Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, your party is discussing whether political talks can be held in Thuringia with the Left as SED successor party. Why is she struggling so hard?
Merkel: The CDU is quite difficult with it. Even if Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow comes from the West and is a Christian and has as little as possible in common with his party, he is still a politician of the left and thus arrested their program. An honest review of their history in the GDR has not delivered the left until today, at the same time it is programmatically worlds away from what the CDU stands for. Therefore, there is a decision that the CDU does not cooperate with the Left Party. On the other hand, I think that Thuringia's CDU chairman Mike Mohring wants to speak with Prime Minister Ramelow if he wants it, and that he has nothing to do with a coalition.
SPIEGEL: So you go further than many of your fellow party members, who are already talking to Ramelow as a political fall.
Merkel: Mr. Ramelow has the problem of no longer having a majority. Now it's about whether he's trying to organize a majority or not. And here is my basic advice to the CDU: just wait and see. Maybe he does not want to talk to us. If Mr. Ramelow is looking for a conversation with the CDU, you should not deny him, he is finally the Prime Minister, but with coalitions and cooperation has nothing to do.
SPIEGEL: Apart from you, there is only one cabinet member from the East in the cabinet with Franziska Giffey, the Dax companies are run entirely by West Germans, and in almost all areas the mismatch is similarly blatant. Why?
Merkel: Someone has just told me that no German university is run by one or an East German. That's not just strange, that's a real deficit. We still have a lot of work to do. The reason may lie in the fact that many were already too old in 1989/90, with my 35 years I would have had a hard time climbing the career ladder in the economy. Anyone who was a child at the time can, of course, still be in top positions. You have to be clear and clear and sometimes a bit loud to make a career - because I can only encourage East Germans. But again: this is not a good condition.
Peter Rigaud / THE MIRROR
Merkel with the SPIEGEL editors Melanie Amann and Florian Gathmann
