Tribune. She grew up in one of the most famous German evangelical rectory. The writers Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781) and Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), as well as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), but also the terrorist of the Red Army Fraction (RAF) Gudrun Ensslin (1940-1977 ) and the murdered dead Nazi Horst Wessel (1907-1930), this austere institution, so eager to educate and train – and so foreign to France -, gave rise to hundreds of famous geniuses, rebels sometimes bordering on dementia as well as pragmatic personalities attached to an ethic of responsibility.
Angela Merkel belongs to the latter category.
If anything is obvious in his way of being and of doing, fundamentally Christian-Protestant, it is his conviction that man is unable to solve the problems of this world; that we therefore do not inhabit paradise, to quote biblical terms, but a valley of tears here below; but that a life-long task falls on every individual: tirelessly attempting to calm the quarrel that threatens to degenerate or even the conflict frankly turning to war, and to ensure that common ground can be at least in part found.
Sarcasms
Merkel’s humble practical reason stands in stark contrast to the predominant style of French presidents. France, in 2011, overthrew Libyan power and brought down its administration, allegedly in the name of freedom, human rights and the right of the Libyan people to self-determine.
President Sarkozy and the one who had whispered this insane operation in his ear, Bernard-Henri Lévy, then put themselves on the stage like heroes and competed in sarcasm against Merkel – supported by a slap served by representatives of the media – questioning her reliability and calling her a good woman lacking in courage.
Yet it is precisely she who has worked for several years in the rubble left by an ideologically motivated French activism – from which most Libyans have had to suffer and often fatally – to somewhat improve the disastrous daily life of a population plunged into poverty. chaos. Conferences aimed at stabilizing a completely ruined Libya are taking place in Berlin – not in Paris.
When war broke out in the Ukrainian Donbass and Putin annexed Crimea, Merkel kept the upper hand. The Minsk agreement, concluded with its support six years ago, is an exemplary testament to its political technique: a format in which all parties are invited to continue talking to each other and in the framework of which they can negotiate step by step a short or long truce, an exchange of prisoners, the resumption of road traffic at the border.
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