A last meeting of her cabinet, a final session in the Bundestag, and Angela Merkel will step down from power on Wednesday, December 8, after 5,860 days spent in exercising it.
The Chancellor will officially hand over the witness to Olaf Scholz and a long page of German political history will be turned, even if the longevity record will still belong, with nine more days, to her mentor, the late Helmut Kohl.
Compliments will rain.
Her Social Democratic successor has already greeted a
"successful Chancellor"
and
"remained true"
to herself.
Its popularity rating could arouse envy, across the Rhine.
80% of Germans believe that Mutti has done a good job at the head of the country, according to the national institute Destatis, against only 17% agreeing to the contrary.
There is no doubt that the person concerned will welcome the praises with her usual restraint, without pathos, focused until the end on her task, in this case the management of the health crisis which has resulted, to date, more than 103,000 deaths.
"A pause" to think
Madam Chancellor - her title remains unchanged - gave no precise indication of her subsequent plans.
She, who has always kept her private life a secret, simply intends to take
"a break"
to reflect.
During a recent meeting with Mario Draghi, Angela Merkel had expressed her wish, once she left the chancellery, to
"live (her) love for Italy in a completely different way".
It turns out that since June 2021, her husband, Joachim Sauer, a 72-year-old quantum physics specialist, has been appointed a foreign member of the University of Turin.
Enough to revive speculation.
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Angela Merkel's farewell to the long term
The future ex-head of government also has a house in Brandenburg, the neighboring region of Berlin (ex-GDR), where her father, a pastor, had settled after the war. She herself was born in Hamburg, Germany, where she does not intend to return. Once home,
"maybe I'll try to read, then my eyes will close because I'm tired, I'll get some sleep and we'll see where I emerge,"
she told Deutsche. Welle in an enigmatic tone.
Angela Merkel also enjoys making plum pies and potato soups, but cooking shouldn't be enough to fill her days.
"She's not going to disappear so easily and sit in her dacha doing nothing."
She will get involved in one way or another, ”
predicts her photographer Herlinde Koelbl
.
But certainly not like his predecessor Gerhard Schröder, who was hired by the Russian company Gazprom.
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Angela Merkel or the power of pragmatism
Her past functions as chancellor alone offer her a monthly income of 25,000 euros for three months, which can be divided by half over the next twenty-one months.
She will keep a company car and an office in the Bundestag until her death.
She wished for the presence of nine collaborators, an office manager and his deputy, two advisers, three project managers and two drivers.
"What we lack,
" she also said, "
we only notice when we no longer have it
."
