The memoirs of former European heads of government usually end up in dusty foundation libraries, leaving behind the occasional headline in the national politics sections and certainly not having become bestsellers. It is clear that Merkel plays in another league. The demand for accreditations for the presentation of his book, scheduled for Tuesday at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, with capacity for 900 spectators, was such that the publisher decided to commercialize the event and charge admission. They went on sale on September 10, at 11 in the morning, and at 11:07 they were sold out. “I don’t know how I’m going to tell my sister, who lives in Leipzig and wanted to come see Merkel one last time,” Petra whimpered, after waiting in the rain in vain.
In the headquarters of the German political parties, the secrecy about its content causes anxiety, which in the face of the imminent electoral campaign acquires explosive potential. The current leader of the CDU, Friedrich Merz, It was his fiercest internal enemy and “any settling of accounts would now be disastrous,” they confess at the Konrad Adenauer House. And on the other side of the river, at the Willy Brandt House, they fear a “nostalgia effect.”
Almost one term after leaving public life, Merkel remains a sociological phenomenon that transcends politics. His detractors, both in other parties and in his own, question historical decisions, such as opening the door to refugees in 2015 or maintaining a policy of rapprochement with Russia. But among ordinary Germans, his memory remains intact, representing that serene Germany with large majorities.
«German society is not as polarized as they make it seem. On many issues, a broad social center agrees, with the exception of some points exploited by the entrepreneurs of polarization,” describes sociologist Steffen Mau, who has just achieved success with his book ‘Trigger Points’ and who sees in that Merkel’s thirst that the memoirs have made evident is a broad center. The political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder, one of her harshest critics, recognizes that the catastrophe of the ‘traffic light government’ allows us to remember a great value of Merkel that many now envy: stability.
Translated into 30 languages
Without even knowing the text, at the 2023 Frankfurt Book Fair, the translation into more than 30 languages of his autobiography, titled ‘Freedom. Memories 1954 – 2021’. It constitutes one of the most expensive and ambitious publishing projects of recent times in Germany.
Cologne-based publisher Kiepenheuer & Witsch paid Merkel 12 million euros as advance payment and recognizes that the total remuneration can reach 99 million for her political testament, which the author summarizes in one sentence: “There is no freedom without democracy.” The fees were not the decisive criterion, however, among the hundreds of proposals that Merkel received, but rather her rapport with the publisher’s director, Kerstin Gleba, who has published Heinrich Böll, Günter Wallraff and Joschka Fischer, all of them classifiable in the elusive category on the left.
“Rarely has it been as important as it is today to understand how politics works and the great achievement of living in a democracy,” Gleba justifies. In his opinion, “their memories open our eyes to the possibilities, the challenges, but above all to the strengths of our democracy. “They offer deep insight into the thoughts and actions of one of the most important leaders of our time and are a great asset to readers around the world.”
700 pages and 43 euros
The printing company CPI Clausen & Bosse GmbH has forced its employees to sign confidentiality clauses to prevent leaks. The actress Corinna Harfouch, who like Merkel grew up in the GDR, has recorded the audiobook and has not revealed the name of the studio.
We only knew that it has about 700 pages and will cost about 43 euros until the weekly ‘Die Zeit’ published, as a preview, the first paragraphs. Merkel recounts the crucial NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, when “for Putin, the prospect of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia was perceived as a declaration of war.”
Merkel recalls her first meeting with Trump at the White House. «I saw everything from the perspective of the real estate businessman who wants to get a property. For him, all countries competed with each other, and the success of one was the failure of the other. He did not believe that everyone’s prosperity could be increased by cooperation.
In his private audience with Pope Francis months later, he addressed his concerns about Trump. “He simply said, ‘Bend, bend, bend, but make sure it doesn’t break.’ And I liked that image,” he says.
He portrays Putin as “always on guard against being mistreated and always ready to prevail… he was childish, reprehensible, you could shake your head. But that did not mean that Russia disappeared from the map,” he reflects.
He also reviews his first electoral victory, when the social democrat Gerhard Schröder refused to admit his defeat, an unprecedented event in the Federal Republic. “I very much doubted that Schröder would have behaved the same way with a man,” he admits. And at 70 years old he makes one last confession: in recent months he has wished “from the bottom of his heart that Kamala Harris would win in the United States.”
Merkel has written her book with four hands, without blacks but with the essential collaboration of Beate Baumann, her office manager, confidant and accomplice. For two years, from Monday to Friday, the two have worked from eight in the morning in the office that Merkel has as former chancellor in the annexes of the Bundestag, the same one that previously belonged to Helmut Kohl. From her window you can see an anonymous graffiti that fired her from office and plays with the German feminine of the noun “chancellor”: “Will a man ever be able to reach the Bundeskanzlerin?”
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