Angela Merkel, Future German Ex-Chancellor

[BansheeOne]

Under the Schröder administration, Germany exceeded the deficit criteria of the Growth and Stability Pact, then proceeded to pressure the EU Commission into not issuing an official reprimand over it. It was considered a bad example for others by the domestic opposition and critics abroad at the time, and was naturally cited as such again in the Euro crisis; including as an excuse by the PIIGS, but also the Merkel government to deflect domestic criticism for doing either too little or too much to help the former onto their predecessors.

Overall, people probably prefered to look not too hard at questionable numbers while the system was running for the sake of the common currency success narrative.

[TonyE]

On 12/2/2021 at 2:31 PM, BansheeOne said:

In this spirit:

SOKO Uckermark?

YES PLEASE!😄

[BansheeOne]

It's what ex-leaders do:

Quote

Date 10.12.2021

Angela Merkel to pen political memoir

Germany's former leader will write the book with her long-serving adviser Beate Baumann. Merkel had been tight-lipped about her post-political plans before the announcement.

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel is just two days out of office after 16 years and already has her next project lined up. On Friday her longtime aide Beate Baumann announced that together, she and Merkel will be working on her political memoirs.

Merkel "does not want to retell her entire life," Baumann told Der Spiegel magazine. "She wants to explain her key political decisions in her own words, and look back on her life's journey."

Baumann has largely kept out of the public eye, however, she has been a key adviser to the former leader since the 1990s and co-written some of Merkel's most famous speeches.

She added that the two women planned to pen the book themselves with no outside help.

 "The chancellor and I were quite certain: if we were going to do this book, we would do it alone -- without ghost writers, without historians, without journalists," Baumann said. She estimated that the project would take two to three years.

Before she stepped down on Wednesday, Merkel had been tight-lipped about her post-politics plans, telling writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie that she would perhaps do writing and speaking engagements, but that first she wanted to "do nothing" and "see what happens."

[...]

https://www.dw.com/en/angela-merkel-to-pen-political-memoir/a-60084431

[Stuart Galbraith]

Fiver says Angelina Jolie plays her in the movie.

[Ssnake]

Angela Lansbury is probably no longer available.

[Stuart Galbraith]

Eva Green?

[BansheeOne]

Jenny Agutter. Debate closed. 

 

[BansheeOne]

Hugely meandering "Spiegel" piece on Merkel's post-power life and views on current events. I've tried to focus it somewhat on the latter in below excerpts.

Quote

A Year with Ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel

"You're Done with Power Politics"

After 16 years as Germany's political leader, she realized that it was time for someone new. But one year after leaving office, Angela Merkel has yet to find closure – particularly as her legacy continues to look worse and worse. DER SPIEGEL visited her to learn more about her present and her plans for the future.

By Alexander Osang
01.12.2022, 16.14 Uhr

Her new office looks a lot like her old one, just smaller. It feels a bit like a doll house built especially for Angela Merkel so that she – after 16 years in the Chancellery – doesn’t feel so alien in the austere administrative building at the Brandenburg Gate. The Adenauer painting from Oskar Kokoschka is again hanging behind her desk, but it looks quite a bit bigger because the ceiling is so much lower. The four chess figures that made it over here from the Chancellery also seem to have grown larger. She cut a branch from the Adansonia tree in her old office and has placed it in the window. There are the flags and the sculpture of Kairos, from the Rostock artist Thomas Jastram, standing here in a completely new context, just like Merkel herself. Kairos is a Greek god, the personification of favorable moments. He has long held his protective hand over her.

This used to be the office of ex-Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Before that, back when the Berlin Wall still ran by outside the window, it was used by East German National Education Minister Margot Honecker. When Merkel heard about this for the first time, her reported response was: "Oh, shit."

She was still chancellor at the time, but likely had a foreboding that such historical baggage could weigh heavy.

[...]

It is surprising just how unchanged she looks. How uncontrite. She seems so relaxed, its almost as if no bad news finds its way here into her doll house. On a chair at the window sits Beate Baumann, seemingly also part of the office furnishings. She has been Merkel’s office manager for decades, following her from position to position, and she was an important part of Merkel’s tenure as chancellor. The two women are now writing the chancellor’s political memoirs together.

Merkel takes a seat on a black sofa and elevates her leg, propping herself up with a bright-red heart pillow that has also been brought over from the Chancellery. During a summer trip to Salzburg with her husband, she injured her knee in a restaurant. The place had reserved an exclusive room for the famous couple, and on the way there, she slipped on the wet floorboards. And tore her ACL.

"The Austrians are always so agitated when dealing with famous people," she says, a comment which almost suffices to turn the accident into an international affair.

For 16 years, everything that happened to her was somehow relevant. The unwanted neck massage given to her by an American president, her décolleté at an opera premier in Oslo, the selfie she took with a refugee, the uncontrollable shaking on display during a couple of appearances late in her tenure.

She was at the top of the list of the world’s most powerful women for 14 years. And when she starts talking about Xi Jinping’s unmoving facial expression, she seems statesmanlike even though her arm is resting on a red-satin pillow. Like everyone else, she was only watching on television as Hu Jintao was led away from the Communist Party Congress. But she knows Xi; she knows how to read him.

She also met the queen on several occasions, of course, and visited Windsor Castle last year on her parting visit. Did they talk about her legacy?

"She always asked questions," says Merkel. "And the type of questions certainly indicated what she was interested in."

[...]

Now, we get to down to the business at hand. Others might talk about the weather to warm up, but she talks about the British monarchy. The global crisis, though, is waiting.

When we spoke at the Berlin Ensemble theater in June, she responded to the question as to how she was doing by immediately talking about the Russian war. It was during this discussion, almost exactly half a year after the end of her tenure, an interview that had actually been scheduled to discuss a book of her speeches that had just been published, that Merkel broke her silence. She spoke briefly about wintertime walks on the Baltic Sea coast to "air out" her chancellorship. She says she listened to "Macbeth" as she walked along the beach, and in Shakespeare, a battle is always right around the corner. One wonders how she felt in winter as Putin gathered his troops on the Ukrainian border, with the Scottish storms and the Baltic Sea winds jumbling together in her ears.

"When the hulyburly’s done, when the battle’s lost and won," calls out one of the witches in the opening scene of "Macbeth." And then all three together: "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air."

"I would have preferred a more peaceful period after my departure, because I really did spend a lot of time on Ukraine," says Merkel.

"But it didn’t come as a surprise. The Minsk agreements had eroded. In summer 2021, after President Biden met with Putin, Emmanuel Macron and I had wanted to put together a productive negotiating format in the EU Council. Some were opposed to the idea and I no longer had the power to push it through, because everyone knew I’d be gone that autumn. I asked others in the Council: 'Why aren’t you speaking up? Say something.’ One said: 'It’s too big for me.’ The other merely shrugged his shoulders, saying that it was an issue for the big countries. If I had run again for re-election that September, I would have followed up. It was the same story during my farewell visit in Moscow. The feeling was quite clear: 'You’re done with power politics.’ For Putin, only power counts. He brought Lavrov along for this last visit. Usually, we tended to meet face-to-face."

From that perspective, does she regret not having run again?

"No," she says. "It was time for someone new. Domestically it was overdue. And on foreign policy, I was also no longer making any progress on a lot of things we were trying to do. Not just on Ukraine. Transnistria and Moldova, Georgia and Abkhazia, Syria and Libya. It was time for a new approach."

She waits four or five seconds, and then says: "But you can’t now act as if everything would have been just fine with the correct attitude."

Is she talking about current German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock of the Green Party? About value-driven foreign policy?

A scant smile emerges, with her lips compressing as it fades as if she’s going to start whistling.

"Deliberate Self-Restraint"

"I don’t want to interfere in current politics," she says. "It is difficult to talk about the past, because you are immediately in the present. Deliberate self-restraint is the order of the day."

[...]

"There are certain decisions people expect politicians to make without burdening their constituents," she says. "Otherwise, people get the impression: Oh, if you have to explain so much, it’s probably difficult to push it through. That is important for the acceptance of decisions. It won’t become greater just because you have explained them. Look at the NATO summit in Bucharest that is the focus of so much debate because at the time, I didn’t yet want us to welcome Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. At the time, it was only interesting to experts, if at all."

Merkel suddenly recalls that in addition to watching "The Crown" and "Babylon Berlin" with all her free time, she also took in "Munich: The Edge of War," the Netflix film about Neville Chamberlain’s role in the run-up to World War II. Jeremy Irons played Chamberlain. She liked it because it shows Churchill’s predecessor in a different light – not just as a frightened pawn for Hitler, but as a strategist who gave his country the buffer it needed to prepare for the German attack. In her telling, the Munich of 1938 sounds a bit like Bucharest of 2008. She believes that back then, and then later during the Minsk talks, she was able to buy the time Ukraine needed to better fend off the Russian attack. She says it is now a strong, well-fortified country. Back then, she is certain, it would have been overrun by Putin’s troops.

"Pretty Dark," She Says

It's the standard defense, this time embedded in world history. Without blood and pain, free of rubble and fear. Broadcast by a streaming service.

"Matthes plays Hitler," says Merkel.

Beate Baumann nods.

The chancellor meets privately every now and then with the Berlin actor Ulrich Matthes to talk about drama, both onstage and in the world. As a young woman, she saw Hilmar Thate as Richard III in the Deutsches Theater, and later Lars Eidinger in the same role in a different Berlin theater. She saw Ekkehard Schall play Arturo Ui. "Pretty dark," she says, and it’s not totally clear if she is talking about Putin or Bertolt Brecht. At one G-7 summit, she accused Boris Johnson, who was trying to undermine the Northern Ireland Protocol, of being on a path to becoming a dark Shakespearean character. Johnson turned around in annoyance, but returned five minutes later and said: If so, then I’m Hamlet.

[...]

She says she has flipped through a recently published biography of her, written by Ralph Bollmann. He ends with the finding: "Angela Merkel came in as a chancellor of change, but she became a chancellor of stasis. Slowly and painfully, she learned how unprepared the residents of the Western world were for the new."

She shows little patience for such assessments. She checks the numbers and the recollections – she was there after all.

"Writing about 2013 and 2014 as though I had nothing to do other than negotiate Minsk before then asking how I could lose sight of Ukraine, that’s too simplistic for me," she says. "There were also general elections that year, coalition negotiations, there was still Greece, I broke my pelvis. At the moment, for example, everybody is talking about the Russian war, but nobody is saying anything about the EU-Turkey deal. At some point, somebody is going to ask: How could you have forgotten that? I think its important for us to ask ourselves how world history works. According to what rules. Otherwise, we’ll keep making the same mistakes."

[...]

As she was watching the funeral service for the queen on television, she saw her one-time British counterpart Tony Blair among the mourners. A great political talent, she says, a political contemporary who completely ruined his reputation – in the Iraq War as Bush’s "poodle."

Did she see how George W. Bush recently confused the war in Ukraine with the Iraq War during a recent public appearance, and then tried to pass it off by joking about his age?

A Portrait from George W. Bush

She shakes her head.

"I think it’s a form of self-critique," she says. "On the Iraq War, though, I have to be rather critical of myself as well. I was one of those who chastised Gerhard Schröder at the time for risking the division of the West" for his vocal refusal to join the war effort.

She starts looking for something on her iPad. Perhaps the pathetic "proof" offered by then U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell of Iraq’s alleged WMD program? Or the article that she wrote for the Washington Post at the time defending the war? Instead, she shows a picture that George W. Bush painted of her. The former president took up painting several years ago.

"He painted Berlusconi, Putin, everyone," says Merkel smiling. Perhaps it’s a form of therapy Bush uses to quiet his demons. At his ranch in Texas, Bush told her that his father thought his other son, Jeb, would have made the better president.

One wonders how she fits all the pieces together emotionally, the tens of thousands of deaths and the hobby of the president, who seems to have wanted the war as a way of proving himself to his father. But it is perhaps just a reflection of the skills that the leader of a country has to possess. The big and the small. Above the sofa on the wall behind her hangs a photograph that a German astronaut took from space and gave her. It shows the Baltic Sea island of Rügen, part of her eastern Germany constituency. Everything is there in one picture. Her electoral district. And the rest of the world. Her perspective, her life.

But its over now. Kairos, the god of favorable timing, can no longer help her. It must be torture to recognize the correct moment for a decision, if it’s a decision that you can’t make.

The only thing she can do now is admit to mistakes and beg forgiveness. Everyone wants an apology, particularly for her Russia policies. Wolfgang Schäuble, her former finance minister, wants one, as do 86 percent of the readers of a Zeit Magazin newsletter. But it seems that she isn’t interested in expressing remorse because she isn’t certain that she really did anything wrong. She’s not sure whether history might ultimately prove her right.

[...]

She Now Flies Commercial

One month after she broke her silence at the Berliner Ensemble theater, she appeared at a symposium held at the Leopoldina, the German Academy of Sciences, in Halle. The event marked the 70th birthday of Jörg Hacker, a bacteriologist who once led the Robert Koch Institute and who spent 10 years as a member of Merkel’s innovation dialogue when she was in the Chancellery. The motto of the symposium was: "On bacteria, people and sciences." Merkel wore a red blazer and pushed the ailing professor into the hall in his wheelchair. She looked like his nurse. The photographer Herlinde Koelbl, who was also present, began shooting regular portraits of Merkel in 1991. Her change in appearance, Koelbl says, is most prominent in her eyes. They lost their radiance.

Merkel approached the podium to hold her first big speech since leaving office. "Of bacteria, people and sciences," she said, looking up. "Let’s begin at the beginning, with the bacteria."

That was her message to Germany. Let’s begin at the beginning, with the bacteria.

She had been in Washington a couple of days previously to meet with Barack Obama, the West’s other famous political retiree. During his final visit to Berlin, he seemed to beg her not to leave the world alone with the crazies. And she stayed in office for another four years. But the number of crazies didn’t drop.

[...]

With Obama, she also ended up talking less about Russia than she thought they would. And even less about Germany.

"He, of course, has been out of office for longer than me. I have the impression that we agree when it comes to Putin," she says. "After Russia’s annexation of the Crimea, we did all we could to prevent further Russian attacks on Ukraine and we coordinated our sanctions down to the last detail."

Is Obama pleased with his legacy?

"I'm Still Searching a Bit"

"I think he’s at peace with himself. He knows that he will always be a unique personality. I’m still searching a bit. Being able to withstand criticism is part of being in a democracy, but my impression is that once American presidents leave office, they are treated with greater respect in public than are German chancellors."

Obama "airs out" in Hawaii, not on the Baltic Sea coast. He never flies commercial. She visited Obama’s office in Washington and says that around 150 people are working for his foundation. She went with him to the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which was completely closed to other visitors during their tour. At the Italian restaurant in the evening, they were the only people in the room. She sensed his aura, she says. But it is also true that Americans expect their presidents to remain present even after leaving office. Libraries are built for them after their presidencies, while in Germany, chancellor’s only get a federal foundation once they die.

The opening event for the Helmut Kohl Foundation, which Merkel attended a few weeks later, is reminiscent of a memorial service. It takes place in the French Church on Berlin’s Gendarmenmarkt square. A line is waiting at the side entrance, with two CDU lawmakers at its end, Ralph Brinkhaus and Manfred Grund. As if ascending to a stage, Merkel labors her way up the steps to the main entrance, slowly and carefully because of her injured knee.

"The lady seems to be carrying quite a burden," Grund jokes to Brinkhaus, and both laugh. It is with guys like that Merkel had the privilege of spending half her life.

Taking Russia Seriously

CDU chief Friedrich Merz is the first to speak, she's the last. In between, there is someone from the Allensbach Institute, a respected polling firm, which has determined what the Germans think about their chancellors. Adenauer is the most important, followed by Brandt, and then Merkel. She is ahead among 15- to 25-year-olds. Sixteen percent of them don't even know who Helmut Kohl was, the chancellor who delivered German unity. Statistics drape themselves over everyone like a shroud and they are forgotten. Angela Merkel, though, is here to revive Kohl. Her jacket is bright yellow and her voice as clear as a bell. A contrast to Merz, whose voice always sounds like he's speaking into a horn.

Merkel shares a few anecdotes about Helmut Kohl and names three lessons she learned from her predecessor.

First: The importance of the personal in politics.

Second: The joy of creating.

Third: Thinking in historical context.

Give that approach, she says, she is quite certain that Kohl would already be thinking about a time when relations with Russia could be resumed. Because that time will come at some point. She also says that taking Russia seriously isn't a sign of weakness. For a moment, there is reverent, indecisive silence in the CDU. Take Russia seriously? Is that how it works? Then the room breaks into applause. Loud and sustained. Merkel smiles, nods and hobbles off the stage, leaving her party behind with Friedrich Merz in the Berlin night.

Once again, everyone seems quite surprised by how good-humored she is.

Rainer Eppelmann, a Berlin pastor with whom she started engaging in politics 32 years ago, jaunts perkily through the side entrance. "Good speech," says Eppelmann."A good woman."

Two days later, Merkel dives even deeper into German history. In the main square of Goslar, she holds the ceremonial address on the occasion of the city’s 1,100th anniversary.

The audience includes the city's most esteemed citizens, including the mayor and one of the Goslar's famous sons, Sigmar Gabriel, the former head of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). Also, for some reason, the ambassador of Indonesia is here. "A very interesting country," as the mayor asserts in her welcoming address. The hall greets Merkel like a pop star. She delivers her speech sitting down because of her knee. She speaks about the history of Goslar like a local guide. Ore mine, the Rammelsberg UNESCO World Heritage site, the Upper Harz water management. Words that she is probably uttering for the first time in her life. Forty-seven churches and chapels, a showplace of Nazi propaganda, host of the founding party conference of the CDU. Afterward, a local jazz band plays their version of Nina Hagen, the same song played for her at the Bendlerblock.

Merkel rushes back to Berlin with her two Audis, which wait for her wherever she goes. Sigmar Gabriel heads out for a meal with the Indonesian ambassador, floating through the ancient alleys of his hometown as if on a cushion of air. Merkel had dropped by the Gabriels for coffee two hours before the anniversary event. She turns down speech offers from American agencies for several hundred thousand dollars, but in Goslar, she delivers a sit-down speech – a favor for Sigmar Gabriel, her former vice chancellor.

Gabriel returns the favor. "I wouldn't worry too much about Angela Merkel's legacy," he says. "She was a good chancellor, and in many ways a great one. There is absolutely no reason for her to apologize about anything. Nord Stream and the sale of gas storage facilities, for which I was responsible, were a consequence of the liberalization of the European energy markets, which was decided by the European Union in 2002. No one wants to hear that today. Angela Merkel certainly didn't believe, as Gerhard Schröder did, that we could politically integrate Russia through the pipelines. That's why she went to Putin and negotiated the political terms. And it was already clear under what conditions Nord Stream 2 would be stopped. The current ones, for example."

Gabriel believes that Putin wouldn't have attacked Ukraine if Merkel were still chancellor. He says Putin had incredible respect for her. As a woman who led the most powerful country in Europe, and, more importantly, a person with a deep understanding of Russia. In October, after visiting Olaf Scholz in Berlin, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán also said at a press briefing that the war wouldn't have happened if Merkel were still in office.

You can't choose your contemporaries.

[...]

At the end of October, we meet again in the Uckermark, the region where she grew up. She has chosen a small church as our meeting place, a landmark in the forest. She steps out from the autumn leaves like a ghost. She has known the little church that the Huguenots once put here since childhood. By the end of East Germany, it had fallen into complete disrepair, but after the fall of the Wall, Merkel's father Horst Kasner, a former pastor and director of the Templin Pastoral College, made the church his pet project. He founded an association to raise money for the project and they rebuilt the church, completing it in 1994.

[...]

In the autumn of 1989, she observed that the GDR was collapsing primarily due to its economic shortcomings, rather than its democratic ones. That's perhaps the decisive lesson Merkel drew from the first half of her life for the second. A lesson, it seems possible, that she ultimately applied to trade with China and gas deals with Russia.

"There is an intellectual elite that is very value-driven. But it has no chance if it is not backed by the broad majority. The success model of the West is that people are doing well. And that everyone gets something out of it, whether they are freedom-loving or not. In any case, I think it is very much the right thing to support with multi-billion programs and not to overtax the Germans when it comes to prices," she says. "Not everyone can freeze for Ukraine."

Put On a Sweater, Merkel Said

Baumann laughs. She complained the other morning at the office that it was too cold. Then put on a sweater, Merkel said.

She walks through the Uckermark village as if on inspection. She talks about how one of the old farmhouses is for sale, and even knows the asking price. She talks about the forester's lodge, which corresponds to some Prussian prototype. Back at the little church, she suddenly recalls a motif on the façade of the cathedral in Modena – Cain and Abel, the fratricide, a Biblical scene that, as art historian Horst Bredekamp says, became the experimental field of artistic freedom. And with that, we're back on the topic of war.

In spring, she traveled with Bredekamp to Tuscany to study the Renaissance, one of the first private vacations she had taken since leaving office. When she was there, a tweet reached her from Ukrainian Ambassador Andriy Melnyk saying she should be visiting the mass graves of Bucha rather than Italian cultural sites. It was only a rhetorical barb, but it clearly highlighted the dilemma she is facing. She feels the need to get involved, but she can’t. No one wants her at the table, and she thinks she knows why. She's been out of office for too long.

"You need to experience everything from the inside to be able to meaningfully contribute. So many things have happened since February 24," she says. "But if someone comes to me with question, I'll give them an answer."

"Complicated Enough As It Is"

But no one calls. A few days after our conversation, Scholz said he had always had good contact with her and would keep it that way. But that was likely more of a rhetorical observation. The Chancellor Scholz is on thin ice. His party had a stronger connection to Russian natural gas than Merkel ever did, and Scholz was sitting at Putin's long table just a few days before the war broke out, looking to all the world like a small child.

Some have found themselves wondering why Merkel's experience with the main actors isn't being used in a global crisis of this magnitude. She says the focus should be on Ukraine and not her, and that the Ukrainians would have to request her participation in negotiations. Then it would be up to the German government to approve it. In any case, it’s little more than a thought experiment, she hasn’t received any requests.

"No," she says. "And why should they? It is already complicated enough as it is."

[...]

Merkel and Baumann started reading Churchill's mammoth work on World War II and discovered that the British prime minister wasn’t nearly as enamored of war as they first thought. They say he had a critical view of the League of Nations and the missed diplomatic opportunities.

"Do you know what he called World War II when he spoke with Roosevelt?" Merkel asks.

No.

"The unnecessary war," she says in unison with Baumann.

They glance at each other and nod. It is, one can assume, their commentary on the current situation in the world.

"Through the current war, a certain phase of history has ended. A euphoric phase. The victory of freedom in 1989. Today, we are more facing a world that is again full of complications," says Merkel. Once again, she seems to have fallen into a scientific, law-of-nature perspective. She says she hopes her book will provide answers as to whether she would have been able to intervene and stop the war, she hopes those answers will come to her and develop as she writes.

Can she still sleep after seeing all the terrible images on the evening news?

"Yes," she says. "Of course, sometimes I wake up at night thinking."

About what?

"History does not repeat itself, but I fear that patterns do repeat themselves. The horror disappears with the witnesses. But the spirit of reconciliation also disappears," says Merkel.

"Ms. Baumann noticed that I had become increasingly pessimistic toward the end of my tenure," she says.

"Gloomy," Baumann adds.

Perhaps the most devastating aspect is that she has had to watch how poorly diplomatic solutions are working, and yet she can see no real alternative to them. She offers praise for the resistance of the Ukrainian people, but believes that Germany should not be the first nation to send modern tanks because, as she says, "Germany can still be used to good effect" in Russia. Her thinking revolves around the temperaments of state leaders, seating arrangements, place cards and travel plans, moods, potential partners and unusual coalitions. Merkel was the queen of crisis diplomacy, the empress of late-night negotiating sessions. Before the Minsk agreement, she shuttled back and forth between Berlin, Brussels, Moscow, Kyiv and Washington over the course of eight days until, at one point, as the sun was slowly setting, she sat in a monumental Belarusian palace and negotiated through until morning as waiters tried serving vodka nonstop. Putin would later state that it had been the hardest night of his life.

She was a top diplomat on the global stage, but now she's a diplomatic armchair quarterback. She watched the Shanghai meeting on TV and could see how the relationship between Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev and Putin has changed.

"Despite the two countries' different political systems, Tokayev is a point of connection for us," she says." He has openly refused to support Putin's war. It requires, I think, incredible strength for a man like that to stand up to Russia. I think President Xi has registered that."

[...]

"In Uzbekistan, President Xi was welcomed with troops and by the president. In Putin's case, only the prime minister came. Something is stirring. We have to be careful that we don't set our bar so high that there's no one left at the end who can meet our standards."

[...]

She has spent her entire political career alongside self-important boys – and she has frequently won. Merkel prevailed over Helmut Kohl, Edmund Stoiber, Gerhard Schröder and Horst Seehofer, against Pedro Sánchez, Nicolas Sarkozy and George W. Bush. Her whole life has basically been an example of feminist politics, both in domestic and foreign policy. She may not have outwardly pursued feminist politics, but she always embodied it. She never played the woman card, she simply prevailed. Merkel had none of the scandals, no affairs, no plagiarized books, oversold family stories or plagiarized doctoral theses that have plagued other politicians in Germany.

As things currently look, though, that may not help her in the end. Putin, of all people, a man she knew so well and for so long, with all his tricks, his lies, his bravado, is destroying her legacy. The biggest bully of them all. And Trump, whom she once wanted to outlast, is also seeking re-election.

In her party, the blusterers are now getting their way. She says she was extremely bothered by the recent "bickering" in German parliament. The fact that Scholz had adopted Merz's "egregious tone" and was then even celebrated for it in the media. The balancing, moderating, mitigating, asymmetrical demobilization with which she confronted the political positions of her opponent – all that is gone now. She lulled the German people to sleep during her time in office, but now that she has stopped singing, they have woken up.

As long as she continued winning elections, everything worked fine. But everyone seeks to take advantage of weakness. The Queen hadn't even been buried yet, for example, before many Jamaicans started trying to leave the Commonwealth. Some voices inside the German government say that Merkel left office just in time, leaving her successor to pay the tab.

[...]

"It's amazing how much work is still incomplete after 16 years of work," she says, before adding, surprisingly: "For example, there still isn't a well-functioning electronic health record card. Germany is sometimes lacking in basic curiosity, the joy of new things."

So does one ultimately not achieve anything?

"This is life's trajectory," Merkel says. "I'm a state of pupation right now. You go through different phases in life. The first phase is to get distance from the daily politics. A new phase comes through writing. You used to be trying to shape the next day, but now you're writing about the past. No more hero narratives, no more traps. The best thing about writing is that nothing more can be added. It's material that has been concluded."

"I Have Arrived at the Period of Reflection"

It sounds like a mantra of self-calming. An exercise in hypnosis. Everything is getting heavier and heavier.

A state of pupation.

Merkel and Baumann initially wanted to write a book about the refugee year. The golden year when Time magazine featured Merkel on its cover as its "Person of the Year." But then came the coronavirus and Putin. Now, they want to tell the story of her entire political career. But how will it end? They found a publisher late this summer, and it is reportedly paying a large fee for the German chancellor's memoir. They only just started writing.

Each passing day sheds new light on her legacy. And the past doesn't rest. Recently, when an air defense missile struck Poland, it briefly looked like it might spark a world war. How is it possible to write a book in times like that. With all the noise.

"I have now arrived at the period of reflection," Merkel says. "There is less of the hamster wheel phenomenon."

Baumann writes something down in her notebook. Perhaps the words hamster wheel phenomenon.

As the autumn sun slowly sets, Merkel walks down to the two black Audis that are waiting to take her back into exile. To Berlin. Where, at some point, it will be decided whether the pupated chancellor will become a butterfly.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/a-year-with-ex-chancellor-merkel-you-re-done-with-power-politics-a-f46149cb-6deb-45a8-887c-8aa37cc9b3c3

Edited December 3, 2022 by BansheeOne

[Soren Ras]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

 

—

Soren

[BansheeOne]

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Germany: Angela Merkel leaves CDU-aligned think tank

5 hours ago

German former Chancellor Angela Merkel has left the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, which has close ties to her CDU party. She reportedly said she'd "grown out of the role" and wanted to be free of political obligations.

Former Chancellor Angela Merkel this month left a major think tank directly tied to her political party, the Christian Democrats (CDU). 

A spokesman for the Konrad Adenauer Foundation on Friday confirmed that Merkel had made clear last week at a meeting that she would no longer be available for the influential 55-person oversight board or for future members' meetings. 

It's the latest of several steps taken by Merkel, a four-term chancellor who left office in 2021, to withdraw almost completely from front-line politics.

The think tank had made no mention on December 1, when announcing the re-election of chairman Norbert Lammert and other senior members in a press release,

that probably the most famous member of the foundation was leaving.

The organization confirmed the development after it was first reported in this week's edition of Der Spiegel news magazine, which goes on sale in print on Saturday.

What is the Konrad Adenauer Foundation? 

The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (KAS) is a think tank that's directly tied to the Christian Democrats but is also nominally independent from the party for legal reasons. 

It's named after Germany's first post-war chancellor, Konrad Adenauer of the CDU, who was in power when it was founded in 1955. 

Each major party with parliamentary representation in Germany can and does set up such an organization.

They are primarily state-funded. They are meant to provide and promote political education, research and insight at home and abroad. The groups tend to see themselves as influential in molding the intellectual and policy agenda of their parties.

Merkel said she had simply 'grown out of the role' 

Der Spiegel cited people close to Merkel as saying that the former chancellor had said "I have simply grown out of this role" when explaining her decision. 

According to the weekly, Merkel's entourage said Merkel was not trying to send any kind of message against the foundation or her party. They said she simply wanted to mold a new life that was completely free of political obligations. 

To retain a position on the foundation's board, regular attendance at its meetings is required.

KAS has only ever made one exception to this rule, for another longstanding former chancellor, Helmut Kohl, who suffered from severely declining health in the years before his death.

Simply seeking solitude, or at odds with new leadership? 

Merkel has said several times before and since quitting as chancellor that she intended to withdraw from front-line politics after leaving office. However, the extent to which she's cutting ties has raised eyebrows in some quarters. 

Der Spiegel cited one CDU politician, albeing speaking off the record, as describing it as a "break" with the party, and another calling it an "ice age."

Merkel gave up the chairmanship of the CDU several years before quitting as chancellor, soon after announcing she would not run again in 2021. She also started to limit her public appearances to those necessary for a chancellor in her last term, for instance more often skipping partisan events like campaign rallies.

[...]

But her difficult past with current CDU leader, Friedrich Merz, has led to frequent speculation about how close to the party she remains, or will remain.

Merkel and Merz effectively vied for control of the CDU after Helmut Kohl's departure. Merkel won the struggle and Merz ultimately left politics, only to return once it was clear Merkel was leaving. 

He has been trying to position the CDU, now in opposition, somewhat further to the right since taking up the party leadership. Many considered Merkel a rather centrist CDU leader.

The pair's game of musical chairs continued last week: As Merkel left the Konrad Adenauer Foundation board, Merz was able to join it. 

That development was noted by the think tank in its press release.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-angela-merkel-leaves-cdu-aligned-think-tank/a-67675437

[BansheeOne]

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"Reason of State"

The True Story Behind Merkel's Promise to Israel

Israel's security is an element of Germany's "reason of state," Chancellor Angela Merkel famously stated. It is a formulation that has since been adopted by the country's leading politicians. But what does it mean? And where did it come from?

By Christoph Schult und Klaus Wiegrefe

24.01.2024, 13.54 Uhr

Chancellor Olaf Scholz was wearing black when he stepped in front of Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, on October 12 of last year. Five days after the massacre perpetrated by Hamas, he said that the hearts of all Germans were "heavy in the face of the suffering, the terror, the hate and the contempt for human lives" that had been visited upon Israel. It was clear, he said, that Germany sided with the victims.

And then he uttered a notable sentence: "Israeli security is Germany’s 'reason of state.'" In other words, Germany’s very existence was linked to Israel’s security.

It was almost the exact formulation that Angela Merkel used during her famous speech before the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, in 2008. Since then, there has been plenty of head-scratching and debate: What does the statement mean? Is it an element of foreign policy doctrine? Is it a blank check for Israel, enabling the country to turn to Germany at any time?

Or was Merkel simply carried away by the moment? Flattered by the honor of being the first foreign head of government to be allowed to speak to the Knesset? And did the formulation perhaps even harm German foreign policy rather than help it?

Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (a Social Democrat) once said that Merkel had been presenting "an emotionally understandable but foolish notion that could have extremely serious consequences." Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), who was Merkel’s foreign minister for a time and today serves as German president, expressed doubt on one occasion that she had been "completely aware of the importance of that sentence."

DER SPIEGEL set out to discover the origin of Merkel’s statement. We examined classified documents from the WikiLeaks trove and spoke with around a dozen people from Germany and Israel, including diplomats, current and former politicians, senior officials from the Chancellery and the German Foreign Ministry, and with intelligence officials. Almost all of them insisted on anonymity.

Merkel herself declined a meeting. Beate Baumann, her former office manager and closest political confidant, did agree to answer questions, and consulted with the former chancellor. She gave permission for her answers to be used, but not directly quoted.

Berlin, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) headquarters, January 2005

Angela Merkel was under pressure. With the party having just suffered painful losses in state elections in eastern Germany and her adversaries inside the CDU sniffing an opportunity. They believed that Merkel, herself a divorced, childless woman from the east, wouldn’t be able to last much longer as party chair of the conservative CDU.

In Merkel’s favor, though, was the fact that the CDU was preparing its 60th birthday that summer. She was hoping to deliver a special speech that would strike the soul of the party. As the year got underway, she asked her team to come up with a powerful speech, including something about Israel. After all, party godfather Konrad Adenauer had sought close ties to Israel following the Holocaust, which was widely seen as a significant achievement.

Relations with Israel were also extremely important to Merkel. Even during East German times, Merkel, who holds a Ph.D. in physics, was fascinated by the research performed by her Israeli counterparts. She also valued Israel’s position as the only democracy in the Middle East, and she valued the diversity of Israeli society, the beauty of the landscape and the historical sights. During her tenure in the Chancellery, Merkel even played with the idea of moving to Israel for a time after retiring from politics – specifically to the kibbutz Sde Boker, where Israeli state founder David Ben-Gurion lived after he had left the limelight.

And she was well aware of the weight of the historical burden born by Germany. Her father became a pastor in response to the Holocaust, and the mass murder of the Jews was a topic frequently discussed in her childhood home in Templin. Still, Merkel would say after the fall of the Berlin Wall that she "only learned quite late just how inconceivably massive was Germany’s loss because of the Shoah." Some of her contemporaries believed that her fondness for Israel was a kind of overcompensation.

Merkel’s team had a hard time fulfilling the task their boss had given them. But then, in April, an essay appeared by Rudolf Dressler, a former SPD parliamentarian and now Germany’s ambassador in Tel Aviv. Dressler wrote that he was concerned about anti-Semitism back home, with the piece concluding with the statement: "The secure existence of Israel is in Germany’s national interest and is therefore an element of our reason of state."

Merkel’s staff was electrified. They felt that the concept of "reason of state" was "CDU language," with former Chancellor Helmut Kohl and CDU cornerstone Wolfgang Schäuble having frequently used the term. Who would care if they stole the sentence from a Social Democrat? Plus, Dressler and Merkel knew and respected each other.

The precise meaning of the term itself has been the subject of some debate among academics since making its way to Germany in the 17th century. Many believed that it was a call for the political leadership to prioritize the state’s interests above considerations like law and morals.

Modern-day politicians, though, use the phrase when speaking of vital interests. Which fit quite well. It referred, says Baumann, to a fundamental, non-negotiable concept.

The CDU celebration took place on June 16. Merkel’s position within the party had significantly improved by then and she had been chosen as the conservative candidate for chancellor in the approaching elections. Speaking to her fellow party members, she said: "Germany’s responsibility for European unification, for the trans-Atlantic partnership, for the existence of Israel – all of that is part of our country’s reason of state and part of the reason for our party as well."

It was an ambitious statement, essentially placing Israel on a level with NATO and the European Union, but it went largely unnoticed. The guests were more eager to chat about the snap new elections in September. The media, too, didn’t pay much attention to Merkel’s sentence.

Berlin, Fall 2005

Merkel won the election and had just taken power when Ehud Olmert, Israel’s deputy prime minister, spoke with her on the sidelines of an event. Olmert doesn’t recall the precise date – he was in Berlin twice in the autumn of 2005. But he has clear recollections of his chat with Merkel. He had been charged by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon with finding out if Merkel would be prepared to export Dolphin-class submarines to Israel, an inquiry that involved the most sensitive arms export in Germany.

Israel had been purchasing such vessels from the production site in Kiel since Kohl’s tenure in the Chancellery. Hardly anyone doubted at the time that the special configuration of the submarines served to enable Israel to arm them with nuclear warheads. Any country willing to attack Israel had to anticipate a nuclear counterattack launched from a vessel that was almost impossible to locate. From the Israeli perspective, it was Germany’s most important contribution to the security of the Jewish state.

But such deliveries were in clear violation of German laws pertaining to arms exports. Nevertheless, Merkel’s predecessor Gerhard Schröder of the SPD had proven willing to send two such subs to Israel. "Sharon requested that I ask Merkel if she supported the submarine deal," says Olmert. "Merkel said that if Schröder had authorized the deal, then she was naturally in favor." Those close to Merkel say that she has no memory of the encounter.

Schröder had the contracts signed in the last days of his tenure, and Merkel then implemented them. Several years later, she would say at an event held by the women’s magazine Brigitte: "The security of Israel is, for us, part of our reason of state. That can be seen for example, in the fact that we have sold submarines to Israel on repeated occasions."

Jerusalem, King David Hotel, January 2006

It was Merkel’s inaugural visit to Israel as chancellor and she was staying in the legendary King David Hotel. For the first time in years, the peace process appeared to be moving forward, with Israel just having cleared out of the Gaza Strip. After her arrival, Hamas made a discrete inquiry as to whether the chancellor would be interested in a discussion.

The terror organization was listed on an EU sanctions list and its accounts were frozen. But a few days prior, the group had won a spectacular election victory in the Palestinian Territories – and the anti-Hamas front in Europe appeared to be crumbling.

Merkel hesitated. According to a confidential U.S. report, she had been opposed to including the Islamist group on the ballot in the first place. And she believed, as people close to her say, that Hamas wanted to use her as a lever against Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

But she also didn’t want to simply reject the offer outright. After all, Hamas had won the election. She sent a message that Hamas must first recognize Israel’s right to existence, or at least take clear steps in that direction. The talks never happened. And a similar request was not repeated during Merkel’s tenure as chancellor.

[...]

The position was far from universal. Just a few months later, ex-Chancellor Schröder called on Israel to negotiate with Hamas without any preconditions. Three parliamentarians from the SPD and the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) even received a Hamas minister in Berlin, to Merkel’s irritation. If Israel’s security is threatened by Hamas, she says, "then there can be no toleration."

Bayreuth Festival, August 16, 2006

A number of top officials in the Foreign Ministry and the Chancellery were unhappy when Merkel said during a summer interview with German public broadcaster ZDF: "The existence of Israel is part of our reason of state." They had missed her speech at the CDU anniversary celebration the year before and there was no draft in existence – nor had one been commissioned, according to numerous contemporaries.

Was the chancellor considering a security guarantee comparable to the NATO mutual defense clause? No, say people close to Merkel today, her intent had been less than that, even if the relationship with Israel was a special one. Just how much less would soon become clear during the 2006 Lebanon War.

Following an attack launched from Lebanon by the Hezbollah militia, Olmert’s reaction was robust. Israel launched a bombing campaign, closed Lebanon’s airspace, set up a sea blockade and, ultimately, sent troops across the border. After just a few days, global public opinion was heavily against Israel. Merkel warned that it should not be forgotten who had triggered the violence, but also demanded that Israel keep destruction "as minimal as possible."

Olmert then inquired whether Merkel would be prepared to send German soldiers to take part in a UN peacekeeping mission at the Israel-Lebanon border. Cease-fire talks had already gotten underway within the UN Security Council. It would have been quite a sensation: Soldiers from the Bundeswehr, the German military participating – 60 years after the Holocaust – in "the force protecting Israel," as Olmert described it.

Merkel said nothing about the request in public for several days. In a telephone conversation with Olmert, she expressed concern that German troops could find themselves in a situation at the border where they would shoot at Israelis – an eventuality, she told the Israeli prime minister, that was unacceptable. Olmert made clear that he thought such a scenario was absurd, which seemed to have its desired effect on Merkel.

But the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian sister party to Merkel’s CDU, was adamantly opposed to the idea – as was a majority of Germans. Sending German troops to the border would never have been supported by a parliamentary majority – a requirement in Germany for all military deployments. After all, who wanted to fight against Hezbollah?

Still, the onus was on Merkel. Lebanon was suffering from the sea blockade, and Israel’s government said it would only lift it if the amount of weapons being smuggled to Hezbollah across the Mediterranean Sea and across the land border from Syria was curbed. Fuad Siniora, the pro-Western head of government in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, asked Merkel to mediate. To Merkel’s surprise, Olmert agreed to lift the blockade as long as the Bundeswehr took part in efforts to curtail weapons smuggling.

Which led to Merkel receiving the leaders of her governing coalition in Bayreuth, where she was for the annual opera festival, on the last day of her vacation in mid-August. The group decided on sending a German contribution. Ultimately, two German frigates, along with speedboats and other vessels, headed out to take part in a UN mission to patrol the coast of Lebanon. German police and customs officials were to help establish a control system on the border to Syria – which ultimately did little to prevent arms from reaching Hezbollah.

The Bundestag rubberstamped the deal. In several interviews, Merkel sought to gain support for the mission by using the reason of state formulation. And she also used it in parliament for the first time: "If maintaining Israel’s right to exist is part of Germany’s reason of state, then we cannot just say: If Israel’s right to exist is in danger – and it is – then we are just going to stay out of it."

Merkel would avoid this particular use of the formulation in the future, because she felt it raised the impression that Israel’s right to exist was up for debate. "What are we actually doing here? This country is recognized under international law," she said. In later comments, she adopted the formulation that Israel’s "security" is part of Germany’s reason of state.

Berlin, Hotel Intercontinental, December 11-12, 2006

Olmert was in Berlin for his inaugural visit as Israeli prime minister. His standing had taken a hit from the war in Lebanon, but he was nevertheless determined to push forward the peace process with the Palestinians. And his willingness to compromise seemed unending: He even seemed prepared for an almost complete Israeli evacuation of the West Bank and for the potential partitioning of Jerusalem. Merkel quickly realized the opportunities this presented.

On the evening before their official meeting, she went to his hotel on her own so they could speak in private. Olmert’s security personnel didn’t actually recognize the German woman who was loitering in the hallway, and they stormed up to Merkel and surrounded her. Olmert had to clear up the confusion.

The two of them then spent three hours discussing Lebanon and the peace process. It was a passionate discussion at times, but in the end, they established a working foundation. From that point on, Merkel frequently sent her security adviser Christoph Heusgen and Middle East expert Jens Plötner – who is now Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s security adviser – to the region to provide discrete assistance in the negotiations between Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Today, people close to Merkel say that for her, supporting Israel in reaching a two-state solution was a central element of her understanding of the reason of state formulation.

[...]

New York, UN Headquarters, September 25, 2007

In her 2007 speech to the UN General Assembly, Merkel used the reason of state formulation abroad for the first time. At the time, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was accelerating his country’s nuclear program and had threatened to destroy Israel. He had even written a letter to Merkel in the same vein, a missive to which she declined to respond.

Now, speaking to the global public, she aired her thoughts. "Each and every German chancellor before me has shouldered Germany’s special responsibility for the existence of Israel," she said, as part of her plea that Iran be prevented from building a nuclear weapon. "It is part of my country's reason of state."

This form of moral support was monitored closely in Israel. But according to people involved at the time, Merkel failed to actually make any plans for a possible war between Iran and Israel. Berlin’s arsenal consisted entirely of economic sanctions when it came to pushing Iran toward compromise.

That, Merkel told the UN, was the practical element of her country’s burden. During her tenure, German exports to Iran would shrink to a third of their former volume. And half a year later, Merkel would hold her sensational speech before the Knesset in Israel.

Jerusalem, Knesset, March 18, 2008

Knesset President Dalia Itzik had invited the German chancellor for the 60th anniversary of the founding of Israel, receiving Merkel with the words: "I’ve changed the rules for you." Until that point, only heads of state had been allowed to speak in Israeli parliament. But Itzik’s proposed change received unanimous approval. Merkel’s pro-Israeli stance had been making the rounds.

As with other speeches during important state visits, Merkel had the first few words translated into the local language and written out in phonetics. A translator then practiced with her as she was preparing for her appearance: "Anni modda lachem sche-nittan li le-dabber ellechem kaan be-bait mechubad se. Se kawwod gado awurri" – I thank you for the privilege of speaking to you here. It is a great honor for me. She then switched from Hebrew to German.

Merkel spoke for 24 minutes, discussing the lessons of the Shoah, the fight against anti-Semitism and the German-Israeli relationship. The term reason of state came in the 19th minute. Merkel quoted almost exactly from her speech at the UN, including the promise: "Israel’s security is non-negotiable for me as German chancellor."

A number of Israeli parliamentarians were uncomfortable hearing the language of the perpetrators of the Holocaust in the Knesset, including President Itzik. "It was a strange feeling: on the one hand, a woman representing the people who had wanted to exterminate us; on the other, this feeling that she was like a big sister wanting to protect us.”

Today, those close to Merkel say that it was the site of the speech that transformed it into such a special event. Itzik was moved, as she says. "Merkel was plagued by questions as to how one of the most enlightened nations in the world wanted to exterminate an entire people. I think she understood that and acted accordingly."

Itzik believes the sentence about Germany’s reason of state is a powerful one. "It goes beyond considerations about how this or that might be beneficial."

Berlin, Chancellery, August 27, 2009

The commitment that Merkel had created through that phrase became clear after Olmert’s resignation. His successor, Benjamin Netanyahu from the right-wing Likud party, pushed forward settlement construction in the West Bank, which placed incredibly high hurdles in the way of a contiguous Palestinian state.

During Netanyahu’s inaugural visit to Berlin, Merkel warned him that the "window of opportunity" for the peace process was closing and that settlement construction had to stop. Netanyahu was unmoved.

A few weeks later, Heusgen, Merkel’s security adviser, met secretly with Philip Gordon, a department head in the U.S. State Department, and Philip Murphy, the U.S. ambassador to Germany. He proposed upping the pressure on Netanyahu. Specifically, he proposed that Washington threaten to withdraw support from Israel in the UN Security Council regarding the so-called Goldstone Report, which accused Israel of human rights violations in Gaza. Heusgen’s proposal is documented in a secret U.S. report. The Americans were not overjoyed by the idea.

Later, Merkel considered making weapons deliveries to Israel dependent on concessions to the Palestinians. When Netanyahu inquired about a new nuclear submarine, Merkel delayed making a decision regarding the financing. The vessel cost around 400 million euros, and Germany was to cover a third of the purchase price.

Even Netanyahu critics in Israel were pushing her to up the pressure. On the other hand, though, her hesitation on the financing of the submarine was inconsistent with her promise that Israel’s security was non-negotiable. Ultimately, she acquiesced. On March 20, 2012, the contract for the sixth submarine was signed. The Germans can be counted on no matter what, it was said in Jerusalem.

[...]

Jerusalem, May 29, 2012

Just a few weeks after the submarine deal, the new German president, Joachim Gauck, visited Israel. Even on the plane across the Mediterranean, he made it clear to journalists what he thought about Merkel’s reason of state phrase: not much.

In Jerusalem, Gauck said publicly that he wasn’t inclined to "imagine every scenario that would put Germany in a difficult spot when it came to politically implementing her statement that Israeli security is part of Germany’s reason of state." In other words, Merkel had gone too far.

Gauck would later come to regret his choice of words. In principle, he supported Merkel’s view – contrary to most Germans. Indeed, Merkel would never be able to convince more than a third of her compatriots of Germany’s special responsibility for Israeli security.

And anyway, from a military point of view, Merkel’s promise was rather empty. The Bundeswehr was in deplorable condition at the time and would have been completely unable to provide assistance to Israel in the case of, for example, an Iranian attack. On the other hand, though, Netanyahu didn’t expect such help. "We need military equipment to defend ourselves. We’ll take care of the rest on our own," as one Israeli official said.

[...]

Assisi, Basilica di San Francesco, May 12, 2018

The Franciscans awarded Merkel the Lamp of Peace, a replica of the fixture on the grave of Saint Francis of Assisi, in 2018. The same award had been presented in the past to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the former Israeli President Shimon Perez. In her acceptance speech, Merkel repeated her assertion "that Israeli security is part of Germany’s reason of state."

The statement came at a time when her relationship with Netanyahu was at an all-time low. She placed great value in discretion and dependability, but he apparently did not. Israeli newspapers would repeatedly print reports about things she had allegedly told him in confidential telephone conversations – but had never actually said, according to people close to Merkel.

The year before, Merkel had even cancelled the annual government consultations that she had introduced in 2008. Officially, the cancellation was due to scheduling conflicts, but in truth, it came in response to Netanyahu’s settlement policies. People close to Merkel say today: How many more times were they supposed to say that they agreed to disagree?

The fact that she nevertheless began using the formulation regarding Germany’s reason of state more often again likely came in response to domestic developments. She was unsettled by rising anti-Semitism in Germany. Just like Rudolf Dressler before her – the man who had come up with the formulation in the first place – she wanted to exert influence on the Germans. And they listened.

Politicians from almost all parties began using the formulation. It appeared in the Bundestag resolution regarding the anti-Israeli boycott movement BDS in 2019, which received support from all parties except the extreme right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the extreme left Left Party. The current governing coalition, which took over from Merkel in 2021, also included it in its coalition agreement: "For us, Israel’s security is reason of state."

Berlin, Today

Angela Merkel is currently working on her memoirs, which are set to be published this fall, and there are of course passages about Israel. Much of her tenure has come under criticism since she left office, including her approach to Russia and her policies on migration. But the formulation about reason of state has remained – and become part of Merkel’s legacy.

[...]

https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/reason-of-state-the-true-story-behind-merkels-promise-to-israel-a-00563b9e-0c66-4717-9331-e0bbb4cc8f88

[Markus Becker]

A hard left "news" magazine is kissing the rear end of a spineless left leaning populist. Color me surprised!

What's noticably absent in this fluff piece is any mention of "Her Solidarity with Israel" flooding us with the worst enemies of the Jews. 

Dead Jews are as important as ever for use for ones own political ends, living ones no fuck is given.  

As evidenced many times since mid January. 

Edited January 26 by Markus Becker

[BansheeOne]

The only time I heard something like "Israel flooding us with the worst enemies of Jews" was when some utter nutbag wrote a letter to my former boss during the 2015/16 refugee crisis accusing Merkel of being a Zionist agent complicit with some evil plan to displace all Palestinians to Europe so Israel can take their land.

Meanwhile, Merkel's stance on Israel has long been noted to be one of her few known solid convictions by a variety of sources. It's certainly more solid than that of certain alternative parties' leaders, who still haven't managed to make an unequivocal statement of support and solidarity with Israel after 7/10 because they have to mind their voters, which include the highest share of anti-Semites and anti-Israel "anti-globalists" among all party supporters.

As such examples show, scratch some loony going on about "great replacement" etc., and you'll find an unhinged anti-Semite.

[Markus Becker]

42 minutes ago, BansheeOne said:

The only time I heard something like "Israel flooding us with the worst enemies of Jews" was when some utter nutbag wrote a letter to my former boss during the 2015/16 refugee crisis accusing Merkel of being a Zionist agent complicit with some evil plan to displace all Palestinians to Europe so Israel can take their land.

 

Very obviously Israel had no hand in this. It was all done by someone else as Karl Lagerfeld recognized.