Angela Merkel in Purgatory: Her party rejects the former chancellor and the country reviews her legacy

Berlin.- It was a strange party, which was held last September 25 at the Academy of Sciences of Berlin and Brandenburg. Angela MerkelThe Chancellor of Germany would have turned 70 between 2005 and 2021 and his party the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) wanted to pay tribute to him. But this was a special tribute. low profileMeasured words. “The Tiptoe Approach,” summarized weekly die zitBecause Merkel, who wants to regain power after being in opposition for four years, and the CDU view each other from a distance. Her party does not justify MerkelNor anyone else.

Merkel was the Chancellor who had won four consecutive elections. one that He held power for 16 years. Which helped keep Europe united during the years of turmoil. At the same time, austerity was painful for the southern countries and which for some years controlled the continent’s leading economy with relative prosperity. Who faced the winds of the epidemic. The one who left the Chancellery is celebrated as a politician, a model for many.

But today Merkel, the only woman in office and the first from the East after reunification, is already a historic figure. tortureHis Is inheritance subject of reviewAs if, after the first positive draft of the story, the second took a less friendly tone. One can say that the merits of every former politician’s career are subject to the capricious fluctuations of judgment of his contemporaries and historians. And now, after years away from the political fray, she is preparing to introduce her own draft, with an international launch on November 26. Freedom,

His long-awaited memoir (RBA, in Spanish).

in germany, Current CDU leader and chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz denies thisOlaf Scholz. Merz, for more than 20 years, has been a close foe of Merkel, the man from prosperous West Germany who disputed power with the politics of the former German Democratic Republic, both more conservative and more liberal than she is.

From Merkel’s immigration policy, which allowed Germany to welcome one million foreigners in 2015, to her sudden abandonment of nuclear power after the Fukushima accident in 2011, it is difficult to find a policy of the former chancellor that the Christian Democrats –their Christian Democrats-capture like a flag. And it’s not just his party. In addition, Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD)who ruled with him during a large part of his mandate, Mark the distances.

The social democratic policy of border control and the promise of “mass expulsions” can also be interpreted as disrespect to their heritagethose welcome policies they read again Under another prism. They are no longer (only) an example of a humanitarian Germany that had fully acknowledged and reformed its crimes and errors; Also appears as Fuel for the rise of the far rightFrontier in Germany until then. His former ministers, such as Horst Seehofer, who was head of internal affairs and also president of Bavaria, add: “The 2015 decision brought the Alternative for Germany (ultra AfD party) into parliament.”

Seehofer made these statements to the recently published author-journalist Eckhart Lohse die tauschung (deceit), a rigorous and sustained test of inheritance MercalianAccording to Lohse, there comes a date when perceptions about Merkel and her place in history change, “the moment when even Merkel’s supporters begin to wonder what went wrong during her tenure as Chancellor.”

The date is 24 February 2022, a few months after the change of government. Russia invaded Ukraine And Germany’s old certainties – cheap Russian gas, confidence eternal peace on the continentThe Security The American canopy guarantee is staggering, or simply They collapse.

“Immediately after the transfer of powers in Berlin the balance means a it’s hard to wake up“, writes journalist Lohse of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung“Germany has adjusted itself to cheap energy from Russia, cheap technology from China, and the unshakable belief that the United States will also care about the security of the country with the most exports and the largest economy in the center of Europe.”

Merkel, according to this reading of her mandate, Attempted to “save” Germany and Germans from a world in turmoil, but did nothing to “change” it.“At that moment, everything seemed stable to us,” Lohse says in a telephone conversation, alluding to the book’s title, which describes a deception that is also a hoax. Of illusion, security and well-being. “He betrayed us, we betrayed ourselves. But that stability was not for eternity.”

and today it is Germany Post-Merkelian – Germany is economically stagnant, with a divided coalition and in a time of stagnation until the next elections, and a barrage of news about trains arriving late or industries in crisis – looks without nostalgia at the previous stage. Critics fault Merkel for her pragmatic nature, reluctance to commit to grandiose visions, and tendency to avoid disruptive decisions or take unnecessary risks. make the country unconsciousOne center-right politician comments privately: “The 2010s were years of growth and stability for Germany, but it was a wasted time.”

Lohse, author of die tauschungbelieves that there is something more complex in the relationship between Germans and Merkel and Merkel’s relationship with the Germans. First: It was not just Merkel who was responsible for the “deception” or “confusion”. The entire country participated in that theater of confusion, as is evident from the widespread support it received. And second: until the last days of his 16 years in power, in a speech in which he clearly expressed his feeling of being, like many East Germans, a second-class citizen, the Chancellor avoided highlighting his origins in the GDR. Did. As if he wanted to adapt to a system and party modeled on West Germany without too much trouble. As if he had overcome the difficulties of reuniting the two Germany

and its citizens after the fall of the Wall in 1989.

Lohse’s analysis is, “Because she wanted to prove to everyone that as an East German she could survive in this system, she took no risks.” Despite the distance, there is a resemblance to Barack Obama, the first black person in the White House. Donald Trump came after Obama. After Merkel, who could have been a symbol of a certain unity of East and West, the extreme right has established itself, especially in the East. and the feeling of “Mental Wall” Between east and west. “Now,” says the author, “we see that we were never so far away.”

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