There's one like that never again

Angela Merkel led Germany through crises, but changed more than claimed, yet ruled for too long.

It has become all about Angela Merkel, and she even managed to make that happen, it's been almost three years now. Since the end of her tenure, she has added nothing significant to the interpretation of her political persona. Anyone interested in her on the occasion of her 70th birthday should therefore focus on: her tenure of 16 years, major crises, major changes, but also years of wear and tear and silence, which today feel like the past. There were moments of victory and phases of decline, evidence of her closeness to the people and a sense of alienation, which in some places led to frustration and hate. "Get away from Berlin", they shouted, and the polite request for a selfie with her, both could coexist everywhere in Germany when Merkel appeared.

Evaluating her 16 years in office with a single school grade is only possible in a certain light somewhere in the middle. Why bother then? Those who want to give her a "One" may not have learned much about migration, the AfD, and acute structural weaknesses. Those who think a "Six" is appropriate are dismissing a politician who saved the last conservative people's party in the EU, the CDU. The "One" and the "Six", both is boring, isn't it? Both is calculably predictable and completely without ambition, understanding anything seriously. Three-quarters (74 percent) of Germans call her tenure "rather good years", 22 percent "rather bad years". As Chancellor, they miss her by only 40 percent, 58 percent do not.

"Unavoidable"

Instead of focusing on this red thread: Angela Merkel and her tenure reveal more about us than about herself. Anyone who saw and heard where Angela Merkel stood knew where the German center was. At the same time, Germany underwent much more change during her rule than the calm chancellor, her signature gesture, suggested. For she was his way: not to describe or invoke the change, but to make it "unavoidable" somehow, compelling but also a little arbitrary.

Merkel shied away from radical reforms and their brash sound after the near-defeat against Gerhard Schröder. Yet, in the first Grand Coalition, she brought about the largest tax increase in recent history: three points on the value-added tax, which would be around 50 billion Euros annually today. She also implemented the largest social reform since Agenda 2010: the pension age at 67. Unemployment was halved during her tenure, research expenditures were doubled, climate protection was massively accelerated on a broad front.

At the same time, Merkel pursued the change of the CDU, her party, with great determination. In family policy, immigration policy, citizenship law, minority rights, military service or minimum wage, there was hardly a stone left on another in the party programs. Some praised it as "modernization", while others denounced it as "social democratization". Whatever it was: it made electoral victories possible, but also the AfD.

As a People's Party, Merkel shifted the party to the extent that the population changed. And it seems pointless today to argue who drove these changes: Merkel, the CDU, or the population itself? Leadership can be present even if those being led are not aware of it. And yes, you can impose a lot of change on the Germans, but you mustn't do it loudly or forcefully. Merkel's class, as well as her limitations, come to the fore: What she saw as "doable," was usually accomplished. What she saw as not doable - because it wasn't majority-supportable - she left untouched.

The Big Postponement

The Germans are, in fact, great procrastinators - until it's no longer an option. This was the case with education, as the first Pisa Shock broke the Bund-Lander deadlock. This was the case with Agenda 2010, which Gerhard Schröder initiated when Germany had five million unemployed and was seen as the "sick man" of Europe. This was the case with climate protection, which gained momentum on a broad front when Fridays for Future took to the streets and the debates in 2019. The young people drove the last Merkel government forward: They led the Chancellor back to her beginnings as "Climate Chancellor," having negotiated the first Kyoto Protocol as an Environment Minister under Helmut Kohl.

And finally: The big postponement is happening once again. Now it's about long-overdue investments that often fail not at the money (or new debts) but at the constantly growing bureaucracy: the many, many small objections on the ground and at all levels of bureaucracy. Many of these underfunded investments are actually state matters, such as schools and most roads. Twice under Merkel, German federalism was reformed to bring clarity and momentum to the state structure. But it wasn't enough.

"You know me"

Angela Merkel and her tenure tell us a lot about Germany and the Germans because she was such a permanent and paradoxical projection surface. "Everything that happens in Germany has somehow to do with me," she once said sensibly. This describes an absolute exceptional position, as a Chancellor naturally has - yet she appeared as normal and unremarkable as any man or woman. In the 2013 election campaign, when she put her challenger Peer Steinbrück in check with the line "You know me," she could just as well have said to the viewers, "You know yourselves" - so choose me!

At the same time, the Chancellor never really showed her hand, which gave room for many political insinuations. Towards the public, she always emanated an arrogant "Let me handle this," dismissing comprehensive transparency as unnecessary. For a long time, the people bought into it: Trust through familiarity and projection. A Chancellor who tackles the big problems of the country and the world in the same way as one handles their own problems at home. Spectacular 41.5% were the results in 2013, with the AfD and FDP remaining below 5%.

Staying with the Familiar and Comfortable for as long as possible, just like "normal" Germans, became a mistake that is still being reckoned with. Instead of forming a black-green coalition in 2013, another Grand Coalition with the SPD was formed: The dismantling of the economy-reviving Agenda-Reforms began, the needless expansion of the welfare state, the driving on faith and often on wear and tear.

In the German energy sector, at the end of it all, all the eggs were in one basket - the Russian one. The German industry liked the cheap gas and oil, making it a part of the German business model that is now collapsing. The less politics under Angela Merkel prepared for, the harsher and more expensive the awakening in the spring of 2022 was. Despite her analytical mind, she couldn't think out of the box. "The Soviets also supplied us in the deepest Cold War," she said, defending the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project to the end. She didn't make illusions about Russian President Vladimir Putin's character. Mistaken and expensive.

Domestically, the end result of three Grand Coalitions was exactly what historians had warned about: The extreme wings have grown stronger, causing fear. Merkel didn't see it, especially in the eastern part of the republic? Or didn't she want to, since she didn't want to be influenced by this biography-based experience? Coming from the East was long considered a burden, which she eventually acknowledged. So, after the refugee crisis of 2015/16 and later due to her Corona politics, she became a projection surface: this time for the anger of certain milieus that were increasingly turning inward.

Inheritance

But anyone who looks at the shifting dynamics in the Netherlands, Italy, France, or Great Britain, must acknowledge: Merkel's course saved the CDU from oblivion, as it had for other bourgeois people's parties in Europe. For Germany, this is an insurance - paradoxically, against the direct consequence of this saving of the political center, the strengthening of the far-right.

And did Angela Merkel not take any risks at all? But she did: for her belief that Europe could never fail at Germany. She took on this legacy from all German Chancellors and pulled it through her time. This inheritance led her to hold Greece in the Euro with immense effort in the early 2010s. This inheritance led her to keep German borders open when, in 2015, thousands of refugees were pushing through every day. And it led her to break a major German taboo when the European economy was devastated by the Corona pandemic: Merkel agreed to EU debts with joint liability - in other words, German liability alone.

Each of these decisions was rightly controversial. At no point would confirmation in a popular vote have been certain, quite the contrary: Two of them would likely have failed. That she always followed the majority is therefore nonsense. What she promised the majority was peace after every storm.

"The country will come out of the crisis stronger than it went in," she formulated it in some way or another. It was the typical promise of all halfway conservative pragmatists who govern in crises and seek comfort afterwards: "Dear citizens, when this is over, you will get your old life back." After the financial crisis and the Euro crisis, this held true. After the refugee crisis (if it has even ended), many citizens found it no longer applicable.

This crisis led to chaotic stages and the Corona state of emergency to the end of her tenure, which she could not shape alone and self-determined. In more than one way, the final grand finale was also missing. She stepped down as a Chancellor who was almost revered worldwide, but who understood her own country less and less over the years. In more than one respect, there will never be another one like her.

Today Angela Merkel turns 70. Congratulations.

Angela Merkel, as the leader of Germany, navigated various crises, including the debt crisis in Greece within the European Union.
During her tenure, Merkel maintained close relations with notable figures such as Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, and Gerhard Schröder in the realm of politics.
Merkel's rule saw significant transformations in Germany, including tax increases, pension age changes, and climate protection measures, albeit gradually and subtly.
The European Union, in particular, appreciated Merkel's efforts in keeping Greece within the Euro during the early 2010s and maintaining open borders during the refugee crisis in 2015.
Merkel's association with controversial projects, such as the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, generated criticism, particularly regarding perceived ties with Russia's President Putin.
Merkel's impact on German politics extended beyond her own party, CDU, by influencing other bourgeois people's parties across Europe, thereby helping to preserve political centrism despite the rise of far-right movements.