The approximately 2.8 million Germans (out of a total of 60.4 million registered) who will have the right to vote for the first time on September 26 in the Bundestag elections were 2 years old when Angela Merkel took over. Federal Chancellery in 2005. Suffice to say that since their earliest childhood, they have known only one head of government.
Does there exist for all that a Merkel generation, as there was an Adenauer generation which pushed during the reconstruction of a Germany devastated by the Second World War and twelve years passed under the rule of Adolf Hitler?
Read also Angela Merkel leaves office after 16 years in power
The parallels quickly find their limits as history offers statesmen exceptional circumstances.
In Germany, Konrad Adenauer (chancellor from 1949 to 1963) had to relieve a country still buried under rubble, Willy Brandt (1969-1974) opened the doors of an iron curtain which had hitherto been hermetically closed and Helmut Kohl (1982 -1998) was the one who recovered German unity.
Be 20 years old in Germany
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A prudent and reassuring chancellor
The sixteen
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