Merkel’s political farewell according to Le Monde
At the farewell ceremony organized in her honor, outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel wanted to give the image of a peaceful transition with her Social Democratic successor Olaf Scholz and learn a lesson from the health crisis
At the end of his tenure in 2005, Gerhard Schröder chose Frank Sinatra's My Way . Sixteen years later, on Thursday 2 December, Merkel played a hit by East German punk singer Nina Hagen for the farewell ceremony held in her honor in the great courtyard of the Ministry of Defense in Berlin.
Constitutionally, Merkel is still Chancellor. He will leave office permanently only when his successor is elected by the Bundestag. The date of the vote is now known: Wednesday 8 December. The announcement was made on Thursday, just hours before the ceremony for the woman who led the German government for 5,860 days: nine fewer than Helmut Kohl (1982-1998), the longest-serving chancellor since the birth of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Codified under Frederick William III, king of Prussia from 1797 to 1840, the so-called "Grosser Zapfenstreich" ceremony takes place only on rare occasions: when a President of the Republic, a Chancellor, a Minister of Defense, a general or an admiral leaves the his post, or to mark an exceptional event, such as the end of the Bundeswehr mission in Afghanistan, which was celebrated on October 13 in front of the Reichstag building, seat of the House of Representatives.
Despite its solemn character, we read in Le Monde , this ceremony traditionally organized at nightfall, which consists of a march with torches, a prayer and musical moments, allows the protagonist to add his own touch. Merkel did not fail to do so, first in her short speech upon arrival, then in the melodies she chose and finally in the small unexpected gesture she made before leaving the Ministry of Defense in her big black Audi.
Look to the future without "resentment or pessimism"
The speech, first of all. In seven minutes, watch in hand, the Chancellor had little time to go into the details of the "eventful and often very demanding" 16 years she passed in power. “These sixteen years have required a great deal of political and human effort from me, and at the same time have fulfilled me,” he said, before referring more specifically to the last two, dominated by the pandemic, whose fourth wave is particularly violent in Germany.
Recalling that she had just chaired a new meeting with the heads of the Länder to decide on the new restrictions, Merkel took the opportunity to draw a political lesson from the health crisis: "This pandemic has shown the importance of trust in politics and science, but also the fragility of this trust. (…) Our democracy thrives on the ability to discuss, to correct one's mistakes. (…) It thrives on solidarity and trust, especially trust in facts, and the contradiction that must be expressed loud and clear when scientific knowledge is denied, conspiracy theories are propagated and hate speech spreads. "
Inviting to look to the future without "spite, resentment or pessimism", the Chancellor then turned to her successor Scholz who attended the ceremony in the midst of about 200 guests, including Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the closest collaborators of Merkel and most of her former ministers, with the exception of a few, such as Wolfgang Schäuble.
"Now it is up to the next government to find the answers to the challenges that lie ahead and shape our future." "For this, I wish you, dear Olaf Scholz, and the federal government that you will lead, every success," the Chancellor told her successor, with whom she has often shown her closeness in recent weeks to give the impression of a soft transition: at the end of October, inviting him to his bilateral meetings with the American and Turkish presidents, Joe Biden and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the sidelines of the G20 in Rome; on November 23, inviting him and key leaders of his future coalition to discuss the health crisis; or again on November 30, having himself photographed at his side with General Carsten Breuer, in charge of guiding the crisis unit created within the chancellery to coordinate the fight against Covid.
Merkel takes a break from protocol
After this short speech, even the music chosen by Merkel had something testamentary about it. While no one was really surprised that the pastor's daughter played the hymn Grosser Gott, wir loben dich ("God, our God, we praise you"), many were amazed to hear Du hast den Farbfilm Vergessen ("Hai forgotten the color film ”) by Nina Hagen. A song he listened to with eyes red from tears that it was hard to tell if they were caused by the emotion or the freezing wind blowing in Berlin on Thursday night.
When asked a few hours earlier about the choice of this hit, written in 1974 during the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the Chancellor replied: “This song was a highlight of my youth. (…) It also comes from East Germany and it happens to still ring in the region where my former constituency [on the Baltic Sea] is located. Today everything comes together, ”he explained, in perfect continuity with some of his latest speeches, in which he often referred to his youth spent behind the Iron Curtain, something that rarely happened before.
After these two very intimate musical choices, to which was added a 1968 ballad, Für mich's rote Rosen regnen ("Red roses should rain for me"), by the German singer Hildegard Knef (1925-1982), the ceremony, which lasted in total three quarters of an hour, it could have ended without the slightest surprise. At the last minute, however, Merkel broke the protocol.
While her guests cheered, the Chancellor took a flower from one of the large red rose bouquets at the foot of the podium. She then headed for her car, before turning back to collect another squad, which she gave to her defense minister, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. The same one to which she had handed over the presidency of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in December 2018, in the hope that she would succeed her, three years later, at the head of the federal government. In the end, the story was written differently: instead of giving her the keys to the chancellery, Merkel left a simple rose to her former dolphin.
(Extract from the foreign press review by eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/laddio-politico-di-merkel-secondo-le-monde/ on Sat, 04 Dec 2021 06:59:41 +0000.