DWhen saying goodbye to Anne Will, the Norddeutsche Rundfunk goes to the highest level and dares to classify it in contemporary history. Her program, her talk show on Sunday evening on Erste, which the NDR is responsible for, was a “gauge for recent German history,” it says. And that – true.
553 editions in 16 years, more than 1300 guests
However, not in the jubilantly positive sense in which the broadcaster continues in its congratulatory message and indulges in numbers: “the most watched talk show in the German-speaking area, 553 editions in 16 years, more than 1,300 discussion guests”.
Anne Will’s show was rather a barometer, for better or worse, a reflection of the culture of political debate in this country. This means years of sugarcoating, sleepwalking and not enough critical questioning during the era of Chancellor Angela Merkel (“We can do it”). And today that means waking up, sobriety, a sense of reality, an eye for the rest of the world, as they began with the attack by Russian President and war criminal Vladimir Putin. Anne Will’s last broadcast this Sunday evening is the best example of this. Anne Will has never been better than this.
In the end he “shocked” Anne Will: Robert Habeck.
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Image: Imago
It asks – crucially – the right question: “The world in disorder – is Germany up to the challenges?” And it has the right guests: Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck, the writer and Peace Prize winner Navid Kermani, the historian and President of the German Foundation Historical Museum, Raphael Gross, and the political scientist Florence Gaub, director of research at the NATO Defense College.
Right question, right round
This is the right time to talk about the current world order that the despotic regimes in China, Iran and Russia and a terrorist organization like Hamas are trying to shape according to their standards of terror and violence, which many in the democratic West have long ignored , some still ignore or make a pact with the oppressors. The West, says Navid Kermani, is in the process of letting Ukraine “more or less fall” and bleed dry and has learned nothing from the past, as the mission in Afghanistan showed: the promises were worthless the longer the war lasted The longer Ukraine lasts, the more our support dwindles, but in a year at the latest – if Trump or another radical Republican is actually elected president in the United States – everything could change. You have to use this time window.
This sets the tone, including for Robert Habeck, who is actually Minister of Economics and not Foreign or Defense Minister and not Federal Chancellor, but is the person who is trusted to provide sensible answers to such questions. Olaf Scholz talks about a “turning point”, but always as if it could be regulated with a few regulations. In his actions, he remains surprisingly self-satisfied with the few pithy words we have heard from him so far as Chancellor.
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