Angela Merkel: You have never seen your Chancellorship like this before

When Angela Merkel addressed her famous »You know me« to the electorate at the end of the TV duel with Peer Steinbrück in 2013, she hit a nerve.

The sentence summed up what many Germans valued about her: no nasty surprises, no unrest, no major changes.

You know what you are getting.

You know me.

Many voters approved of this promise and made their mark at the time with the majority of the Union parties, just as four years later. In the rest of Western Europe the heads of government came and went, Merkel stayed. She is one of the longest serving European leaders in the past 30 years and, in terms of term of office, ranks in a league with despots like Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Alexander Lukashenko.

In her four cabinets, however, things did not always run as reliably, quietly and calmly as the boss would have liked. Plagiarism affairs, the refugee crisis and coalition disputes repeatedly caused changes in the government bank. If you plot your ministers from the last 16 years on a timeline, you can trace who enjoyed Merkel's trust, who helped shape this period - but also when the coalitions creaked.

The upheavals within the government had hardly any impact on Merkel's popularity: the curve that shows the satisfaction of German citizens with their work has been surprisingly constant over 16 years.

The financial crisis, the 180-degree turnaround in nuclear policy or controversial reforms such as the introduction of the minimum wage are only making small dents.

In short, one could say: the Germans felt overall at ease with the Chancellor.

In terms of content, what remains of Merkel's chancellorship after almost 16 years?

This question is not that easy to answer.

Since the early years of her chancellorship, critical voices have complained that it is not clear what Angela Merkel stands for.

However, some key figures show how the country developed:

If you wanted to venture a prognosis after 16 years of Merkel about how things could go on after the federal elections on September 26th - the tip could be: without the Union. The current candidate Armin Laschet can only dream of the polls of the later election loser Helmut Kohl. And that Laschet has the ability of Merkel to recover from the meanwhile meager survey results, is - at least according to today's status - not recognizable.