Angela Merkel: You could be Chancellor


Angela Merkel was constantly underestimated at the beginning of her career – which didn’t hurt her. The Chancellor remains vague about her future plans – she is right, after 16 years on the world stage.

When Angela Merkel ran for Chancellor in 2005, the press seriously wondered if she could do that. After all, she has never accepted a parade (no experience as head of the country!) Or welcomed heads of foreign states – what should she wear, and does she have to exchange hearty hugs with Putin or curtsy at the state reception like Schröder?

Your favorite role is “Silent Mouse”

Angela Merkel has now moved up to a status where she is placed somewhere beyond any gender and party lines, but when you look at the coverage of her political beginnings, it feels like stepping into the chamber of Madame Tussauds sexist horror.

When Merkel became Minister for Women and Youth in 1991 – just one year after she had run for the first time ever – at the age of 37 and in what was then what was known as a wild marriage, the comments outnumbered each other with headlines like “She will be red like a young girl “, her favorite role is” Stilles Mäuschen “(” Bild am Sonntag “). Ha, ha, one would like to say in retrospect, the little mouse took care of a couple of fat hangovers afterwards, including Helmut Kohl, whose “girl” she was once after all. Or his “young wife”, as the “Zeit” wrote somewhat more elegantly, but just as old-fashioned.

What Merkel really thought remains in the dark, she stoically smiled at everything and simply made a steady career. Annalena Baerbock, who believes the political opposite side is extremely ambitious, is an orphan in comparison to Angela Merkel, who holds a doctorate, whose rapid political rise began in 1989 at the end of the GDR in the “Democratic Construction” party and quickly picked up speed: two Ministries, general secretary, party leader, all in less than ten years.

Most of all, they will miss the people who did not vote for them

The first party Angela Merkel was interested in at the end of the 1980s was the SPD, by the way, but she did not want to join a local association first, as requested. It’s a shame for the SPD. Although one might assume: Angela Merkel will miss most of all the people on the left of the center who did not vote for her. (Meike Schnitzler)

She wants to take a break and think “what really interests me”, sleep a little, read, “and then let’s see where I turn up”. We will probably not find out more about Angela Merkel’s plans for the time being than what she revealed to students in Baltimore in July. Despite Corona and the flood, the major crises of the last two years: Your chancellorship is creeping up like a marriage shortly before the separation – the other is still there, but you can no longer feel him.

Love has probably never been the decisive criterion in the election decisions for Angela Merkel since 2005. It is not one that creates closeness through emotions; but probably about the feeling of being able to rely on her as a grounded, unpretentious, discreet, very intelligent person; the simple statement “You know me” was enough for her third re-election. What did you get for it? Long-distance politics, gripping in the crisis, but reactive at the core, including a number of issues of sitting out, see pensions, poverty, digital, climate.

A woman who can do world politics

This only scratched her reputation in the last few meters; on the other hand, there was always the feeling of being in good hands despite everything, with someone who can do global politics, is wide awake, sovereign, respected, and at the same time legible in a sympathetic way, for example with her very own kind of eloquent smile – her look is unforgettable, as Donald Trump didn’t reach out to her in 2017. Add to that the moments of surprise when her humor flashes, also during the two BRIGITTE live conversations, when she said in 2017, for example, when asked whether she suffered from perfectionism: “Well, when I invite guests, I hold up the glasses the light.”

It goes noiselessly, as it came as Chancellor in 2005, when Gerhard Schröder announced in a celebratory mood that he saw no reason to vacate his office, and she was silent and enjoyed. Schröder, who soon switched to the service of Russian corporations, is now posting bouquets of flowers that his wife has arranged; Merkel is not even sure whether she will ever write the great political biography, probably the most honest variant of post-chancellor-like money-making. Probably for reasons of discretion: Every publisher would want her to reveal a few private moments as well. (Meike Dinklage)

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19/2021
Brigitte