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Why we will miss Angela Merkel

2021-06-28T23:46:35.062Z


The Chancellor was never a great visionary. But whoever looked at them knew reliably where the middle was.


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Photo: Emmanuele Contini / imago images

At some point it has to be, at some point we have to start saying goodbye to Angela Merkel and figuring out the past 16 years.

So I'll start, in the last week there were three "last times" for the almost eternal Chancellor: last question time, last government statement, last EU summit.

By the way, nothing will be remembered of any of these last times, except that it was her last time.

Does that surprise anyone?

Not me.

There is already no shortage of sharp judgments. Some say (including Christoph Schwennicke in Die Welt) that Merkel did things mostly wrong and turned the CDU into a heap of rubble that no longer even smokes. The others (for example Jakob Augstein) say that Merkel has mostly done nothing and sedated the country so permanently that she is now leaving it with multiple organ failure. One could answer that with Oscar Wilde: "If the critics disagree, the artist is in agreement with himself." But of course it is not that simple.

Nevertheless, one does not really do justice to Merkel's fourfold fragmented era if one summarizes it in a single large overall grade. Instead, you will have to look at the major challenges individually and how Merkel did in them, from the financial crisis to the euro and refugee crisis to the pandemic.

A few months after he was voted out of office, I named Gerhard Schröder the "last political street footballer" in Germany. What would the comparable dictum be for Angela Merkel? At the end of her 16 years, I can't think of one straight away. Gerhard Schröder allowed his character to shape the administration. Angela Merkel did not allow that. She adhered solely to her understanding of office: to what she believed the normal people in the country would expect of her. It was the

normal zero of

our political landscape. And before everyone laughs, I want to say: That's exactly why we're going to miss her.

All geographic heights in the country are measured from sea level. For 16 years, Angela Merkel defined the political "middle". Not because it shaped, converted or moved the middle of society. But because she almost always knew where this center of society was, i.e. what the majority of these milieus wanted. It was a reliable location: if this center shifted, Merkel shifted too. Sometimes to the left into the social sphere or to social reforms; times direction to the right after the refugee year 2015; sometimes to green because of the approaching climate protection movement. Angela Merkel stuck to the political center as a kind of tracking device as she moved through the political landscape, “Politics is what is

possible

is, ”she said some time ago. But the truth is their policy, which

need

is - what was needed to follow the middle. It was for their benefit, certainly. But it was also useful for a country that could see in the Chancellery every day where it was centered. Which forces pull it and which stabilize it.

Part of this was that the Germans of the traditional center and their chancellor became more and more similar over long stretches, especially among the white-collar workers and the workers. With these people, both men and women, what counted was what has characterized Angela Merkel's appearance over the years: the absolutely unpretentious, the absolutely scandal-free, yes, if you want: the decent. Buying a million dollar villa on credit? Cut a bit on your resume? Not with this woman and not with these people of the "old center" (Andreas Reckwitz). But just as the social power of this milieu has begun to wane, so it is logical that Merkel's era is now ending as well.

Don't tell me that none of this was strategy. And let's not fool ourselves: It was good for four election victories, and if they did it again (heaven forbid) - a fifth would be added. Compared to her predecessors, it becomes clear: As Chancellor, Helmut Kohl always remained where he was, regardless of what was going on around him in society. You could call that conservative or tumb, in any case Germany was largely through with him after only six years in office.

Then the story came back one more time and had German unity under its cloak. Another eight years later, Helmut Kohl lost the election because he could not understand that the middle simply wanted a change. Gerhard Schröder, on the other hand, ruled against a majority in the country when he really had to, and that was a good thing. Not for him and not for his party, but for the country and millions of unemployed. He then lost the election.

Angela Merkel, on the other hand, has never lost an election in which she ran. Yet one would not attribute her charisma. Fifteen years ago, the text about Gerhard Schröder said: "Charisma is what politics forms into that great story that everyone really wants to hear, not just the journalists." We haven't heard this story for 16 years, and many have also not missed for a long time. But I can now again.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2021-06-28

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