In her 2013 election campaign, she was running for her second term as chancellor. In her familiar, abstract and communicatively somewhat old-fashioned style, she addressed voters directly: “You know me,” she told them.
The same is true of the one released last Tuesday. Anyone who reads its more than 700 pages, . Nor will he be surprised by her explanations. But he will distinguish her anxiety about her backwardness and her study to control the interpretation of her political heritage herself.
A memoir is exactly what the word says. The author delivers what he remembers as he remembers it from his own life and maintains complete control of the narrative.
But Mrs. Merkel is no literary figure. She writes exactly as she expressed herself throughout the years of her public presence – without aesthetic elements. “I don’t like superlatives,” she explains.
But her misfortune was that, just three years after she left politics, the world is no longer the same – and certainly not Germany. The country has entered a recession, a war is raging on Europe’s doorstep and the consequences of the politics of the previous years, mainly in immigration and energy, are evident and unsustainable.
Criticism of the book thus proves to be impossible to separate from the evaluation, or to be limited to a simple description of the facts.
A common observation of many analysts is the complete absence of self-criticism. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung characteristically writes, the title of the book, instead of “Freedom”, could well be “No Alternative”. Mrs. Merkel finds no fault in her handling, neither in dependence on (cheap) Russian energy, nor in opening the borders to over a million refugees.
“In any case, if it helps, let’s say it was Merkel’s fault,” she said with almost childlike stubbornness when she was persistently asked about her responsibilities at her book launch.
“Merkel downplays her responsibility. Her memoir is an attempt to regain control of the interpretation of her political heritage. Those who expect self-criticism will be disappointed,” Handelsblatt noted, pointing out what many in Germany have been thinking in recent years: “All this time we would like to hear more about Russia’s attack on Ukraine, about the energy crisis.”
The financial newspaper characterizes as “unpleasant” the lack of self-criticism and the unwavering commitment to options “without alternative” and reports that some fundamental decisions of her tenure have been criticized, rightly, in light of the war in Ukraine – the use of Russian energy, the abandonment of nuclear plants, the neglect of infrastructure and the neglect of the needs of the armed forces.
In an interview she gave to Der Spiegel magazine on the occasion of the publication of her book, Mrs. Merkel was asked: “Does it weigh on you to know that some Islamist crimes would not have happened if you had shielded Germany?”
In her answer, the former chancellor emphasized that from her position she had to take into account both those who wanted a more open immigration policy and those who faced the openness with fear.
When asked if the famous “selfies” with Syrian refugees in 2015 served as an invitation to even more immigrants, he again gave a somewhat strange answer: “A friendly face does not make anyone leave their home. I know many refugees from the former East Germany. None of them would leave just for the chance to shake Helmut Kohl’s hand”…
As for the famous phrase “we will make it” (“Wir schaffen das”) in the immigration case, Angela Merkel explains that this is neither more nor less her worldview: everything is solved. “It’s a flaw that she lacks a sense of resolution. A fundamental European solution was as illusory then as it is today,” Welt opined.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung saw the listing of exhaustive details – even the flight hours on her business trips – as “an attempt to avoid interpretation or assessment of situations”. The newspaper accused the former chancellor of an attitude devoid of philosophical background throughout her tenure, with the exception of immigration. There she “followed her view of humanity, universality”, writes the newspaper and observes that in her book too, Mrs. Merkel appears optimistic about immigrants and skeptical about the Germans and the welcome they have given them. “He arrogantly ignores the unpleasant part of immigration,” SZ noted.
Focus was harsher on the book’s description of the former chancellor’s immigration policy. “What she writes shows how naive her policy has been since 2015. Angela Merkel has profoundly changed Germany, but not in a positive way. It made Germany a country of immigration – against its will. Uncontrolled immigration became the norm during her tenure. We have reached a change in the composition of the nation. Merkel acted on the spur of the moment, without a plan or strategy,” the magazine said, criticizing the former chancellor for still not seeing any mistakes in her policies.
“Her balance sheet is a complete disaster. The nuclear phase-out was a mistake that brought the country to the brink of energy collapse. Immigration policy was ill-conceived and incredibly expensive. Economic policy weak and opportunistic,” he commented, for which Ukraine policy was the darkest chapter. “She doesn’t write it so explicitly, but between the lines it becomes clear that Merkel never thought about supporting Ukraine against Russia. National sovereignty, inviolable borders? Nice principles, but for which you don’t risk a confrontation with the Russians.”
Bild would have preferred something more revealing and exciting to read. “Beware, it will be difficult, sometimes boring – be patient!”, she writes and talks about “a book like her term in chancellery”.
Even FAZ writes that much of the book “resembles a copy from a diary” and “the more boring it gets as it goes on”.
During her tenure, she met four US presidents, as many as France, Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In her memoirs, however, she does not give new information about them, only some parapolitical elements, such as how she felt when the Turkish president made her sit next to him, on a golden throne, something that was severely criticized in Germany, or how the Russian president left his dog roaming the hall with her, knowing she was afraid of dogs. “Was it a little show of strength? I just thought, keep calm, focus on the photographers, it will pass,” she writes.
If Angela Merkel does not particularly enlighten her readers on major political issues, she makes sure to include in her narrative unknown aspects of the 16 years she spent in power and in some places to become more “personal”. It is mentioned e.g. in the three public horror episodes he faced in 2019.
As he writes in the book, he then underwent tests, which did not show anything pathological. But an osteopath told her that her body was releasing years of accumulated stress. Somewhere there he made the decision not to run for a new term. “It was enough,” he writes in the book. After all, she is the first chancellor to decide on her own departure, which can only be credited to her successes.
Whatever the final account is, the pastor’s daughter from Hamburg who lived, as she describes, 35 years in a dictatorship regime and as many in a democracy and managed to be considered the “most powerful woman on the planet”, “the leader of the free world” and the “mother” of the Germans, tells a fascinating story – albeit with not so fascinating writing. And he achieves what he seems to have been aiming for anyway: a testament to liberal values – tolerance, open borders, free trade, international cooperation. Things that – coincidental? – in the post-Merkel era they can be taken for granted.
Source: APE BEE
