The former Chancellor solely confesses venial sins | EUROtoday

„Politische Sachfragen sind quick immer auch Machtfragen“, ist einer der Schlüsselsätze in der Autobiografie, die Angela Merkel zusammen mit Beate Baumann verfasst hat – ihrer engsten Beraterin und Vertrauten über Jahrzehnte hinweg. „Wer es schafft, Begriffe zu prägen, ist erfolgreich, inhaltlich wie machtpolitisch.“ Der Zusammenhang dieser Passage gilt nicht etwa der Auseinandersetzung mit dem politischen Gegner – einer der konkurrierenden Parteien also. Gemeint ist eine CDU-Kommission, die unter der Überschrift „Neue Soziale Marktwirtschaft“ die Prinzipien der sozialen Marktwirtschaft auf den Prüfstand stellen und erneuern sollte.

Merkel war soeben CDU-Parteivorsitzende geworden. Gegen männliche Konkurrenten, deren Hahnenkämpfe in Gremien Merkel sorgsam beobachtete und auch witzig imitieren konnte, hatte sie sich zu behaupten. Bei denen aber, so nahm es Merkel (und gewiss auch Baumann) wahr, schrillten die Alarmglocken, als sie persönlich auch den Vorsitz der Arbeitsgruppe übernahm. Die einen sorgten sich, Merkel wolle mit Traditionen der Marktwirtschaft brechen. „Die anderen wollten mir – eher schnöde – den Erfolg nicht gönnen. Und nochmals: „Wie gesagt, Sachfragen sind fast immer auch Machtfragen, und wer Begriffe prägen kann, ist erfolgreich.“

Recht haben, ist in der Politik das eine. Recht bekommen, ist der eigentliche Schlüssel zum Erfolg. Merkel beschreibt die Machtkämpfe, die dazu gehören: Strategien, taktische Manöver, überraschende Volten, Personalpolitik, Bündnisse.

Episodenhaft und chronologisch wird das Leben erzählt, gegliedert in fünf Teile: Ihre Vergangenheit in der DDR („Ich wurde nicht als Kanzlerin geboren“), die Wendezeit („Ein demokratischer Aufbruch“), die Jahre in Bonn und der Aufstieg in der CDU („Freiheit und Verantwortung“), die ersten zehn Jahre als Kanzlerin mit Finanz- und Euro-Krisen sowie der ersten Überfälle von Putins Russland auf die Ukraine („Deutschland dienen I“), die Zeit von 2015 an, die sie mit der Flüchtlingskrise beginnen lässt („Deutschland dienen II“) und deren Auseinandersetzungen in Gesellschaft und Partei – wie sie schreibt – der eigentliche Anlass zum Verfassen ihrer Autobiografie waren.

Merkels und gewiss auch Baumanns Reflexionen münden nicht in Selbstkritik, welche ohnehin dem damals im Kanzleramt erdachten Wording widersprochen hätte, anders als ihr Vorgänger Schröder denke Merkel stets vom Ende her.

The descriptions reflect what was being reported from government headquarters at the time in question. Russian gas is cheap, delivered reliably and is in the interests of the German economy. Conscription is full of injustices and expensive; Their suspension was celebrated at party conferences of the CDU and CSU. Putin’s policies are aggressive, but must be taken into account. He wasn’t even impressed by Ukraine’s connection to NATO, which Merkel rejected.

The acceptance of refugees corresponds to European values. The exit from nuclear energy was inevitable after the Fukushima disaster and met the expectations of the parties at the time. Politics must be based on circumstances and majorities, is the book’s dictum. Referring to the failures of international climate protection policy, Merkel quotes herself: “We knew almost everything. The question is whether you can react to everything with the same force at all times.” And: “For me, radicalism was not the best way to political success.”

From Merkel’s perspective, the historical past of her years as chancellor doesn’t must be rewritten. She doesn’t make a life confession. At most, venial sins are admitted. Occasionally poorly ready interviews, for instance. Or the smoking factor. At the very starting of her work as girls’s and youth minister, she organized a journalist’s journey to Cottbus.

The FAZ article written by the creator of those strains was headlined “The youngest in Kohl’s cabinet still smokes in public.” Merkel has not forgotten it. Firstly, as a result of it was the primary portrait-like textual content about her in a nationwide newspaper and secondly as a result of her companion on the time and later husband, Joachim Sauer, accused her of getting all the time advised her that she ought to quit smoking, particularly in public. Merkel writes that she caught to it.

The manner up was rocky. Helmut Kohl gave her the Ministry for Women and Youth after the 1990 federal election. Four years later she grew to become Environment Minister, partly as a result of her predecessor Klaus Töpfer was essential of the usage of nuclear power. When Gerhard Schröder, Prime Minister of Lower Saxony on the time, advised her that he had gotten alongside higher with Töpfer, she retorted to the power-conscious Social Democrat: “But now you have to deal with me.”

Merkel’s consciousness of energy grew to become clear within the reality, which was remarkably not talked about within the guide, that she despatched Töpfer’s confidant and State Secretary Clemens Stroetmann, the precise head of the Environment Ministry, into retirement. Merkel had despatched a sign. Personnel points are additionally questions of energy. After Kohl’s defeat in 1998, which Merkel had seen coming, Wolfgang Schäuble grew to become celebration chairman and he or she grew to become CDU basic secretary.

The donation scandal involving honorary chairman Kohl and different CDU politicians caught the celebration and Merkel off guard in 1999. Kohl’s refusal to not identify the donors due to a promise led to tensions. Merkel writes: “It was a complete catastrophe. I could hardly stand it. And I also felt abandoned by Wolfgang Schäuble.” Together with Baumann, her press spokeswoman Eva Christiansen and the CDU federal supervisor Willi Hausmann – a former worker of Schäuble – she consulted.

Christiansen instructed writing an article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung within the “Foreign Springs” part. Schäuble was not inaugurated as a result of he would have stopped the mission. Merkel wrote. Baumann edited. Christiansen supplied the textual content to the FAZ. It didn’t seem as a “foreign pen” however within the information part. “Merkel: Kohl’s time is irretrievably over.” The occasions that Kohl admitted had triggered harm to the celebration. “So the party has to learn to walk.” And: “It has to break away from home like someone going through puberty.”

At the next assembly of the celebration management, which was stunned by the article, she was supported by deputy parliamentary group chief Friedrich Merz and the Prime Ministers Christian Wulff and Kurt Biedenkopf. Others have been horrified – together with Norbert Blüm, Kohl’s former labor minister, and Roland Koch, head of presidency in Hesse. The penalties are described intimately and clearly. Schäuble resigned from his positions as celebration and parliamentary group chief as a result of his personal fundraising failures.

Merz grew to become parliamentary group chief. “I thought. In terms of power politics, I was convinced that I would not have the opportunity to become chairwoman of the second major people’s party in Germany, alongside the Social Democratic Party of Germany.” And she was aware that she would then also have to be ready to be “Chancellor or to become Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.” Merkel was elected celebration chief. “A wonderful moment,” she writes. But she advised her celebrating mates: “That was the last beautiful day for a long time.”

For one other twenty years? The renunciation of the candidacy for chancellor in 2002, pressured by celebration mates, is described – proper as much as the breakfast in Wolfratshausen with Edmund Stoiber, which after all laid the inspiration for Merkel’s additional acquisition of energy. She took the parliamentary group chairmanship away from Friedrich Merz and have become Chancellor three years later.

The loneliness of energy is registered. Not all of Merkel’s concessions discover their manner into the guide. The former “young savages” within the CDU, who thought-about the restrictive overseas coverage of Kohl and his Interior Minister Manfred Kanther to be not updated, solely promised Merkel a long-term alliance if she supported their reform concepts. Peter Altmaier, Ronald Pofalla and Norbert Röttgen have been amongst them – after which grew to become essential helpers within the celebration, parliamentary group and federal authorities.

However, it isn’t clear that Merkel had private mates and confidants within the CDU, other than Baumann and Thomas de Maizière, after all, with whom she had contact in the course of the years of reunification. She didn’t have the networks like these of her celebration mates who had met within the Junge Union. Did she remorse it? Had she tried?

It would not come from her recollections. It’s about responsibility, accountability, work and deadlines – all coupled with warning. Don’t let your playing cards be checked out. Silence can be a part of energy politics, and all those that had shut contact with it have been topic to an (unstated) rule of silence, which may solely be seen not directly within the guide. How the CDU was led from the Chancellery? Who was there on the so-called morning state of affairs within the Chancellery, the place a very powerful home political issues have been regulated? Who must be promoted and who must be punished?

Some of her aides, corresponding to parliamentary group chief Volker Kauder and the altering heads of the Chancellery, have been in a position to say that variations have been additionally mentioned overtly in talks with Merkel. But even afterwards, when writing the work, Merkel adhered to her personal guidelines of confidentiality and secrecy. There are additionally good trivia: lentil soup within the Chancellery. Attending soccer video games.

Of course, there have been speculative fears, particularly inside her personal celebration, that Merkel would, now that every thing is over, make political and private calculations with the intention to enhance circulation. Especially since Merkel has not been seen at celebration conferences or elsewhere within the celebration since leaving workplace. The companions do not have to fret. Only the dispute with CSU chairman Horst Seehofer concerning migration coverage is described intimately to his detriment. Merkel had damaged with him. Seehofer will not be upset about it.

Even Friedrich Merz comes off fairly nicely. She appreciated his ambition. The dismissal of Norbert Röttgen from the place of Environment Minister, pressured by Merkel, performs no position within the recollections. Merkel additionally silently averted the resignations of Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (due to his plagiarized doctoral thesis) and of the Federal Presidents Christian Wulff, who had acted unhappily, and Horst Köhler, who felt deserted by Merkel.

Other companions of the Chancellor will look in useless within the guide’s identify register. Philipp Rösler, FDP chairman and short-term vice-chancellor, shouldn’t be talked about, neither is Ralph Brinkhaus, who changed long-standing faction chief Kauder towards her needs on the finish of Merkel’s chancellorship.

Is there anything lacking? Franz Müntefering’s situation, communicated to Merkel in 2005, is one in all them: there’ll solely be a grand coalition if she abandons her “neoliberal” concepts and celebration selections. Merkel agreed with none problem. Or the announcement by Klaus Student, her long-time federal managing director and profitable marketing campaign organizer, when Merkel was not but positive in 2016 whether or not she can be out there as a candidate for chancellor once more in 2017: “Dr. Merkel, I will only organize the CDU election campaign if you run again. Otherwise not.” Merkel’s and Baumann’s recollections go away room for a complete biography of the Chancellor.