German Chancellor Angela Merkel, together with Templin Mayor Detlef Tabbert and Franz-Christoph Michel, during the celebration of the 750 years of the municipality.ANNEGRET HILSE / REUTERS
The last few weekends have been busy at Templin.
This town in eastern Germany entered the Guinness Book of Records on the first Sunday in September for organizing the longest breakfast table in the world, 505 meters, ousting the American Memphis.
But the really important day was the following Friday.
As part of the commemoration of the 750th anniversary of this small municipality of 16,000 inhabitants, the mayor laid the first stone for the future kindergarten.
The event had an exceptional guest, Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“I come here, where I have my roots.
I will always have a close relationship with Templin, ”he said to applause.
At Templin, Merkel learned that silence and loyalty are survival tools in politics too
A few days before the elections that will mark the end of Merkel's very long term, the people seem divided.
On the one hand, many of those who walk through the center show their pride in the woman who spent her childhood there - from the age of three to 17, when she went to Leipzig to study Physics - and who has passed the name Templin around all the world.
Others criticize her for letting 900,000 refugees into the country in 2015. But most insist that she does not plan to vote for her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
“I respect how much you have accomplished.
But many people I know doubt what to do on Sunday: either abstain or vote for Alternative for Germany (AfD) ”, says a man who shared a school with the most powerful woman in the world and who asks that his name not appear in a foreign newspaper.
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These opinions are not unusual here. East Germany is, by far, where the ultra party is most successful, which first emerged as a reaction to aid to the south in the euro crisis, later championed criticism of the foreign minister's immigration policy - with constant cries of "Merkel has to go" and "Merkel traitor" - and now she is focused on attacking the management of the pandemic. In Templin - actually across the state of Brandenburg - the vote for AfD soared in the 2019 regional elections to second place, very close to the top spot held by the Social Democrats. Two years earlier, in 2017, the CDU had been the most voted party in the town in the federal elections, to which Merkel did run (although for another constituency). AfD came second.
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In the eastern state of Saxony, some polls already place the ultras as the party with the most support, an unprecedented milestone so far.
The man chosen to replace Merkel does not help.
"Laschet?
He seems like a good guy, but I don't see him as a chancellor ”, says another
Templin
.
"Laschet?
He seems like a good guy, but I don't see him as a chancellor ”, says a neighbor
Detlef Tabbert has ruled the town for more than a decade. It is surprising that this mayor of the post-communist formation Die Linke seems the biggest fan of Christian Democratic politics. She acknowledges that there were people in her party who did not like the fact that in 2019 she was named the favorite daughter of the town. “He has been in office for 16 years and there is not a single scandal known to him. And, for the first time, a chancellor leaves power voluntarily, without clinging to the chair, "he says in his office at City Hall.
Despite living only 16 years in Templin, Merkel goes there regularly.
The mother, Herlind Kasner, continued to teach English at the village adult school until shortly before her death, two years ago.
Under the communist dictatorship of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the girl Angela learned early that she had to be very careful what she said to strangers.
But, behind closed doors, the parish priest Horst Kasner encouraged debate.
The eldest daughter was steeped in politics watching television from the sister country on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
The Templin house where Angela Merkel grew up.
JOHN MACDOUGALL / AFP
The journalist Stefan Kornelius, author of the biography
The Chancellor and his world,
believes that this learning of silence as a survival tool has been decisive in his understanding of power.
"The experience of having spent the first 35 years of life in the GDR is very much within her," she explains by phone.
Merkel learned to behave within the limits allowed by the regime.
And Kornelius points out that this learning has been of great use to him in politics.
“He has survived so much thanks to not trusting anyone except a very small group of people, before it was his family and now his closest collaborators.
For her, the most important qualities are silence and loyalty.
And knowing how to wait without acting until the right time.
All that which has been so useful to him he learned at Templin ”, concludes Kornelius.
Local mindset
Mayor Tabbert also believes that the streets around him are key to explaining the figure of Merkel. “She has an introvert character, but you know that in the long run you can trust her. And he prefers to listen before issuing an opinion. This is a mentality that we could call Prussian, which abounds in the people here ”, he assures.
Merkel is the first chancellor of the east, but it is precisely in that area where her figure generates the most rejection. And where AfD triumphs most. Kornelius believes that many East Germans do not see her as an example, but as someone who has simply adapted to the west. “At least it has shown that barriers can be broken down in a united country. But she has never addressed that sensitivity. Shun victimisms. And that's why there are so many people in the East who don't see it as one of their own, ”says Kornelius, head of policy for the daily
Süddeutsche Zeitung.
The visit to Templin on September 10 ended earlier than planned because the chancellor had a meeting in Poland.
In his office, Tabbert shows a photo of her in which she approached to greet those responsible for catering.
It is the sample, according to what is probably the leftist politician most devoted to Merkel, of the benefits of her character: “He was in a hurry, but he did not want to leave without thanking those people for their work.
They are details that show what each one is like ”.
The mayor is confident that, starting this Sunday, she will have more time to spend with the people she knew as a child.
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