Lhe Deutsches Theater is packed for the premiere of Angela Merkel's Memoirs. Plus one free place in the boxes and on the balconies. One minute after online sales opened, all the tickets were gone. There are his former spokespersons, all the country's prominent political journalists, the publishing community, a few invited bookstores and, in the middle of the public, his face hidden by a mask, Joachim Sauer, the husband of ex-chancellor, who greets close friends and tries to blend in incognito. Anne Will, the host of the cult German television talk show, is presenting the evening.
Applause crackles when Angela Merkel takes the stage. She is true to herself. Calm, collected, dressed in a white blazer, comfortable in her flat shoes with crepe soles. On the coffee table in front of her, Freedom (liberty)*, the 700-page autobiography that she wrote over the last two years in great secrecy. “A real gem,” she said, stroking the blue blanket.
The chapterssaved on USB sticks
First print run in Germany: 400,000 copies. Simultaneous publication in more than thirty languages, including Mandarin and Portuguese. Nobody knows the amount of the advance received, but, says the newspaper The mirror, Angela Merkel is now a multimillionaire. She did not want to use the services of a ghost-writer, a journalist or historian to assist him. It was with Beate Baumann, who was the head of her office at the chancellery for sixteen years and in whom she places complete trust, that she wrote this book jointly.
I was used to having people write my speeches for me. This experience was therefore completely new to me and I enjoyed it.Angela Merkel
Beate Baumann watches “behind, behind the scenes”, reveals Angela Merkel, who admits: “I was used to having my speeches written for me. I sometimes added a little note in pencil. This experience was therefore completely new to me and I enjoyed it. » The two women isolated themselves in a small rental apartment in Prenzlauer Berg to type their text on a computer not connected to the Internet. Saved on USB sticks, the chapters were kept in a safe. Sometimes the two women went alone to retreat to a hotel along the Baltic Sea to reflect while taking long walks on the beach.
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It’s the story of a pastor’s daughter…
Angela Merkel took some time off to look back on her incredible trajectory. She worked for two years writing her Memoirs. It's the story of the daughter of a pastor from the GDR who works in a physics laboratory in East Berlin and finds herself a few years later at the head of Germany, crowned by the magazine Forbes most powerful woman in the world…
I was forced to learn so much. I studied physics, not politics.Angela Merkel
“Everything happened so quickly in my political career,” she admits.. One event after another. After the first post-unification elections, I was promoted to minister. A few days earlier, I watched the daily news [le journal télévisé de 20 heures, NDLR] and suddenly it was me on the screen. I was forced to learn so much. I studied physics, not politics. I didn't have time to think about what was happening to me, what was happening in the GDR. This book was the opportunity. » At 70, Angela Merkel has lived thirty-five years in a country that no longer exists and thirty-five years in a unified Germany. “I belong to a generation that was lucky,” she says. I was 35 when the wall fell. I still had life ahead of me. »
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Is she able to understand the new system? Does she really share our values? Members of his political party, made up of a large majority of men, particularly criticized his East German origins. As late as 2022, a journalist even made fun of this “trained West German”. Did she feel accepted as an East German? Instead of being offended by the question, she replied with a laugh: “I was not appointed chancellor by order of the mufti. I have been elected several times in a row. So people had to trust me somewhere. »
The GDR was also friends, parents, parties, a happy childhood…Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel was not one of the courageous dissident architects of the East German revolution, but neither did she collaborate with the system. “We cannot reduce the GDR to this state with which many did not identify. It was much more than that: friends, parents, parties, a happy childhood, wonderful moments…”
An underestimated kid who has no intention of giving up her place
Even harder than being an East German was being a woman in the extremely macho world of politics. “I believe Helmut Kohl gave positions to Eastern women because he thought we were impressionable. » When, in 1999, the one that Helmut Kohl nicknamed ” the girl “the kid, speaks out against her mentor involved in a nasty slush fund affair and some time later takes the presidency of the CDU, some within the party still believe in an “accident”.
The closer the elections got, the more I realized that people were wondering if I could do it.Angela Merkel
But Angela Merkel has no intention of letting herself be “pushed off the stage”. Today, she says that, yes, she had ambition in politics and that is a good thing. She suggests that the worst macho man was the social democrat Gerhard Schröder, during the electoral campaign which led to his first election in 2005. “The closer the elections got, the more I realized that people were wondering if I was one of them. able. » When, after taking the oath, she sits down for the first time in the chair reserved for the chancellor (Germany must have gotten used to the word chancellor) facing the deputies, she sighs with contentment. “There were still happy moments in all of this! » she says with a mischievous smile to the audience, who burst out laughing.
Angela Merkel has always said that she had no intention of justifying herself in this book. “No, I regret nothing” could be her motto when she looks back on the major decisions that marked her sixteen years in power. The refusal to close Germany's borders to the thousands of refugees who were gathering at the Austrian border? “What would have been the alternative? Direct water cannons at them? » On the difficulties of the German economy? “Since Russia invaded Ukraine, we are in a completely different situation. The dream of multilateral globalization is not as easy to achieve as we thought. »
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Angela Merkel has no doubts, neither about the green light given to the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, nor about her assessment of Putin, nor about her decision taken with Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008 in Bucharest not to start paving the way from NATO to Ukraine and Georgia, nor on the lack of investment which led to the deterioration of infrastructure in Germany.
Travel to Italy
Angela Merkel had disappeared from public life for three years, when she handed over the chancellorship to the social democrat Olaf Scholz. She rested in the modest country house she owns in the Uckermark, a region of lakes and hills a few kilometers from Berlin. She traveled in the company of a renowned art historian to Italy, she began to make up for lost time during all those years when she did not have a moment of private life.
To discover
Kangaroo of the day
Answer
She also lists in her book on several pages the catalog of the obligatory meetings which punctuated her daily life and also recounts that, when her mother died, to whom she was very close, she barely had time to attend at the funeral between two appointments and under the spotlight of the paparazzi. “I left behind me the exhaustion of political life,” she confides, visibly relieved. After sixteen years, enough is enough. But citizen Angela Merkel remains a person interested in politics. »
* Freedom, by Angela Merkel and Beate Baumann (Albin Michel, 688 p., €32). Released December 2.
