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| “I don’t know what the hell she’s thinking,” |
Merkologists
explain Merkel
She
was so predictably rational. Then came the migration crisis.
By KONSTANTIN
RICHTER 3/4/16, 5:35 AM CET
BERLIN — German
Chancellor Angela Merkel made a rare talk show appearance last Sunday
to reiterate her stance on the refugee crisis. Six million people
watched. She hasn’t changed her mind, she told them. German borders
will be kept open. A European solution must include Turkey. And yes,
she said, she still believes the crisis will — eventually — be
resolved.
To people who aren’t
German news junkies, Merkel’s appearance probably seemed like old
news. To those in the know it obviously didn’t. In countless
articles, tweets and blog postings, commentators reviewed the finer
points of the Chancellor’s performance. They studied every detail
with the meticulousness of Kafka scholars. How often did Merkel
choose the first-person perspective? Was she quoting the Bible when
she said that “belief can move mountains”? What did she mean when
she called her approach “logical”? And did she really giggle at
one point in the interview?
Angela Merkel has
always been a politician in need of a little exegesis. Years back
when she took over as CDU party leader and then as German chancellor,
even seasoned correspondents didn’t know what to make of her. She
was a novelty in political Berlin, a woman from East Germany and a
quantum-chemistry scientist. She didn’t fit the stereotypes. They
called her “a mystery” and “a sphinx” — and they got down
to work.
* * *
Understanding and
explaining Merkel has turned into a kind of academic discipline.
Germany still has a relatively vibrant newspaper industry and enough
reporters with time on their hands to write long, thoughtful pieces.
Every year or so, the country’s book publishers churn out a couple
new Merkel biographies. There are Merkel blogs, Merkel plays and
Merkel dissertations (“Power Physics: Leadership strategies of
Angela Merkel, CDU chairwoman, in inner-party power struggles,
2000-2004”). A Hollywood-style motion picture, scheduled for
release in 2017, is in the works, too.
Although the
nation’s Merkologists come at the chancellor from different angles
— left, right, positive, negative, religious, feminist — most of
them agree on a couple of things: Merkel is a cautious and secretive
politician who has been shaped by her upbringing in the socialist
GDR. She shies from making commitments that could come back to haunt
her. As a research scientist, she observes how things develop rather
than jumping right in. She’s guided by cool rationality, rather
than instinct or emotions. And she has introduced the scientific
concept of backward reasoning to German politics: She defines the
best possible outcome, then figures out how to get there. Some
Merkologists would also argue that she lacks strong convictions and
lets public opinion influence her decision-making (as in 2011 when
she abruptly chose to opt out of nuclear energy). In short: They
thought they had her figured out.
Merkologists have
gone into overdrive, scrambling to make sense of the new Merkel.
Then last summer,
when most Germans were still in vacation-mode, Merkel took the
country by surprise in a very un-Merkel-like way. She made a
seemingly rash decision to take in thousands of refugees stranded in
Hungary. She came up with an uncharacteristically simple and
emotional phrase: “We’ll make it” was Merkel’s version of
Barack Obama’s “Yes we can,” and it immediately captured the
popular imagination. She posed with refugees for spontaneous selfies
that went viral and, according to her critics, abetted the influx.
She failed to coordinate her open-borders policy with EU partners or
German lawmakers. And then, as German public opinion turned against
her, she simply stood pat.
“I don’t know
what the hell she’s thinking,” Donald Trump said recently. Many
Germans, though generally no fans of Trump, have been asking
themselves the same question. Merkologists have gone into overdrive,
scrambling to make sense of the new Merkel. They’re putting out
more text, appearing on talk shows and writing addendums to their
books — and the fog has cleared a little. Some of the most
outlandish hypotheses, involving, say, the influence of
extraterrestrials or the CIA, have been ruled out. But a handful of
explanations remain.
The continuity
theory
This one is the most
popular among Merkel’s biographers. According to the continuity
theory, Merkel hasn’t changed at all. She is still the
super-rational scientist who methodically looks at every issue with
the best possible outcome in mind. Characteristically, she let the
refugee crisis simmer for a while. But when the numbers of refugees
skyrocketed last summer, Merkel decided that the EU and its Schengen
agreement were at risk. So she came up with the plan that Germany
would bear the brunt of the crisis until a European solution could be
found.
The legacy theory
This theory
complements the first, but adds a little spice. It goes something
like this: Although Merkel hasn’t changed all that much, she’s
now less concerned with public opinion and more with how she’ll be
remembered. Merkel is in her third term and has little to lose. Which
is why she’s willing to think big and take a high-stakes gamble on
something she truly believes to be right.
The charity theory
The theory was
popular last summer but has lost some of its appeal since then.
Merkel, it posits, was overwhelmed by emotion in the face of a
humanitarian crisis. She’s a pastor’s daughter, after all, and
more of a devout Christian than we knew. Plus, all those Southern
Europeans who’d called her an austerity Nazi got to her, and she
wanted to atone somehow. The charity theory found its most powerful
expression in a Spiegel cover that showed Merkel as Mother Teresa.
Adherents point to Merkel’s frequent use of religious terms like
“belief” and “hope.” On the whole Merkologists think it
unlikely that a politician as pragmatic and down-to-earth could have
suddenly turned into a religious zealot.
The theory of
Realitätsverlust
Some Merkel critics
have argued that she’s lost the plot, and champion the theory of
Realitätsverlust, which sounds a little like the theory of
relativity but means something entirely different. Christian Lindner,
leader of the liberal Free Democratic Party, suggested that Merkel
has lost touch after 10 years in power and suffers from
Realitätsverlust, or “detachment from reality.” Adherents point
to a number of strategic and communicative mistakes Merkel allegedly
made — such as her failure to involve other EU governments in her
decisions or her claim that German borders cannot be secured. They
also quote Merkel saying that Germany “is no longer my nation” if
Germans aren’t welcoming to refugees — a statement that, coming
from a democratically elected leader, sounds a little supercilious.
Merkologists who’ve kept up with Merkel in recent months couldn’t
disagree more, though, insisting that “she’s very much the same”
(Süddeutsche Zeitung) or “still the old rational politician”
(Der Spiegel).
The theory of
betrayal
Finally, there’s
the theory of betrayal, which is popular with conservative and
right-wing Merkel-haters. They believe that Merkel, in her quest for
total dominance of the German electorate, sold out to the left.
Having successfully moved the CDU to the political center, Merkel is
now fishing for Green and Social Democratic votes and thereby
launching a process sure to destroy German identity. One particularly
conservative biographer recently wrote that Merkel is pursuing the
“radical vision” of “Germany as a multinational state.”
Proponents of the theory of betrayal can point out that Merkel has
made friends and earned fans on the left, including
Baden-Württemberg’s Green governor Winfried Kretschmann. At the
same time, Merkel’s government has also toughened Germany’s
asylum laws in an effort to stem the influx of refugees. The
Merkologists’ verdict? Merkel is more pragmatic and flexible than
most conservative voters would like, but she hasn’t gone left-wing.
* * *
The work of
Merkologists doesn’t end here, of course. Later this month,
regional elections take place in Baden-Württemberg,
Rhineland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt. The coming EU summit with
Turkey will dominate the news cycle early next week. If Merkel
prevails and resolves the crisis in the coming months and years,
she’ll likely go down as one of Germany’s great chancellors. Then
she can retire and write memoirs — spawning additional biographies,
in turn. And if she fails, we can expect more biographies too, though
they’ll strike a different tone. It’s easy to imagine the titles:
They’ll be called “Misguided — Where Merkel Went Wrong,” or
better still, “A Fatal Lapse of Reason — The Rise and Fall of
Angela Merkel.”
Konstantin Richter,
a German novelist and journalist, is a contributing writer at
POLITICO. He is the author of “Bettermann” and “Kafka was Young
and He Needed the Money.”
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