“Freedom” by Angela Merkel – Reviews and recommendations

It is one of the most spectacular political cinderella stories of our time. A priest’s daughter from a small village in the former GDR became the world’s most powerful woman. She was re-elected four times, and was Chancellor of Germany for a total of 5,860 days between 2005 and 2021. For two years, “die Alt-Kanzlerin” has been writing her story at regular intervals at a beach hotel by the Baltic Sea together with her faithful colleague Beate Baumann. “Freedom. Memoirs 1954-2021” is a story without major facts. Simply put – not unlike how she appeared as chancellor. CHIEF: Angela Merkel is perhaps Europe’s most powerful person so far this century. Photo: POOL Two lives Her 16 years in power is a journey through the 21st century’s biggest world political events, from the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (when she had already become party leader) to her guiding the country through the pandemic, and voluntarily stepping down as Chancellor of the 8 December in 2021. She herself divides her life in two. For the first 35 years she lived in the communist GDR. In the next 35 in the reunified Germany. Of these two very different life periods, it is the first half that engages the most. ON A MOUNTAIN TRIP: Angela Merkel in the mid-70s. At weekends she liked to go to Sächsische Schweiz, among other things to climb. Photo: Privat/Gyldendal When she tells about life in the former “worker and peasant state” GDR, she is sparklingly good. Although freedom was in short supply in the communist dictatorship, it is just as if she is freer here when she now looks back on this period. It turns on the young Angela Merkel, who refuses to be enlisted by the security service Stasi, and who participates in quiet civil disobedience against the regime. It is fantastically exciting to follow her development when, for the first time, she gets the opportunity to choose which party she wants to support in the reunified Germany. It is in these first chaotic years that Merkel becomes Merkel. The depiction of when she outsmarts her local party colleagues in December 1990, and is elected as the CDU’s representative in the Bundestag from the northern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, is a highlight. From there it was a short path to ministerial posts in Helmut Kohl’s governments. THEN: A breath of fresh air during the election campaign before the 1990 parliamentary elections in the Haus der Demokratie in Berlin. Photo: Gyldendal/Privat The world leaders who came and went As minister for environmental protection, for example, she had the opportunity to study the brutal privatization of the former GDR at close range. Many have argued that the shock introduction of capitalism in East Germany had disastrous consequences. So far, Merkel is not willing to go. Although she is critical of how West German companies were allowed to buy up the GDR’s state property, she has not lost faith that the best model is a social version of a market economy. Critics will argue that the market economy the East Germans were forced into was anything but social. For Angela Merkel, continuing to live as an unfree citizen in a dictatorship would be a far greater disaster. In the second part of the book, the people, not to say the men, who ruled the world pass by. Merkel regards them with her stoic gaze. She sits in the front row when Vladimir Putin presents his view of the world at the security conference in Munich in 2007. We are also there when Donald Trump deliberately fails to shake Merkel’s hand during his first term as president: But Angela Merkel does not settle bitterly with former enemies . She is simply too decent for that. MERKEL IN THE MIDDLE: This iconic photo, with an apparently dejected Angela Merkel defying Donald Trump, was taken during a G7 meeting in 2018. Photo: Jesco Denzel / Bundesregierung The refugee crisis Managing to keep what she calls a “joy in the heart” and a certain degree of “Unbekümmertheit”, carefreeness, even in dark times, is Merkel’s recipe for a long life in politics. This friendliness is an important reason why she has time and again managed to win power struggles with political enemies. Political timing was crucial when she decided to settle a showdown with her party colleague Helmut Kohl, who had become embroiled in a corruption scandal. The relationship with this bauta in German politics is something Merkel would have liked to have written even more about. ON THE WAY OUT: Angela Merkel and Helmut Kohl, former CDU leader and Chancellor of Germany. Photo: FABRIZIO BENSCH / Reuters She does not regret her open attitude to accepting refugees in the wake of the Syrian war. Her statement “Wir schaffen das”, “we can do it”, changed the political landscape in Germany, and some would argue that it created fertile ground for the far-right party AfD. She admits that in her political life there is a before and an after this sentence. Perhaps this is one of the examples of her well-developed political flair failing her. Instead, she steered by her moral compass when she saw all the desperate people who were at the European outer borders. PERSONS OF POWER: Angela Merkel with then US President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007. Photo: REGIERUNGonline/Plambeck / AFP 2009: Angela Merkel and Barack Obama during the G20 summit in Pittsburgh. Photo: POOL / REUTERS 2011: Merkel together with Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Photo: AP 2012: Merkel with Norwegian Prime Minister Stoltenberg and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Photo: POOL / Reuters 2021: Merkel and US President Joe Biden. Photo: Evan Vucci / AP Two lives “Freedom” is an interesting journey through our recent political history. Paradoxically, it seems that this narrative becomes more boring the more powerful Merkel becomes. Then there are more considerations to take into account, more political choices to defend. She loses some of the carefreeness and lightness that was the reason why she was able to reach the very top of European politics. Some chapters will probably also feel most relevant to German readers. It is something else to be with when newly divorced Angela Merkel occupies her first apartment in an apartment building in East Berlin. Or when, as a candidate for the German parliament, she sits in a boathouse by the Baltic Sea and listens to the problems of East German fishermen. In such moments, both she and this life story appear at their most vivid. news reviews Photo: Gyldendal Title: “Freedom” Authors: Angela Merkel with Beate Baumann Number of pages: 640 Translator: Merete Franz Publisher: Gyldendal Published: 26 November 2024 Hi! I read and review literature in news. Please also read my review of “Kairos” by Jenny Erpenbeck, “Details” by Ia Genberg, or Franz Kafka’s “The Process” translated by Jon Fosse. Published 26.11.2024, at 12.22 Updated 26.11.2024, at 12.25 p.m



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