Angela
Merkel, the roman à clef
Stranger
than fiction: the German chancellor’s precipitous rise and fall on
migration.
By KONSTANTIN
RICHTER 6/2/16, 5:34 AM CET
The day-to-day
workings of German politics aren’t made for prime-time
entertainment. We don’t have too many Shakespearean characters
among our elected officials. There’s no genuine villainy, no true
drama, no comic relief. But once in a while, things do get
interesting in Berlin. Angela Merkel’s travails over the past year
could be the stuff of a gripping novel.
Analysts see Merkel
as a super-rational politician who doesn’t let feelings get in the
way. A writer would certainly think otherwise. The best works of
political fiction — the recent TV series “Borgen” and “House
of Cards” come to mind — are compelling because they portray
leaders as ordinary humans, emotional and fallible. A novelist would
likely do what journalists and commentators can’t: He’d cast
Merkel as a pragmatist who, for once, listens to her heart, tries to
do things differently — and fails.
The plot lines are
obvious. When the chancellor opens the borders to thousands of
refugees, she takes the Germans (and everyone else) by surprise.
Until then, Merkel had been considered a realist — hard-working and
efficient — but not a visionary. That changed in a matter of days.
All of a sudden, people call her a saint, the Mother Teresa of global
politics. She is tipped for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Merkel runs into
mounting opposition and, eventually, changes tack. Although she never
says so explicitly, the German government has, in effect, reversed
its open-door policy, imposing border controls and initiating a
controversial deal with Turkey to stem the migrant flow. Merkel
appears to be back to her old self. The difference is she’s no
longer as popular as before.
The Germans don’t
know what to make of their leader anymore. You can tell by her
approval ratings. The woman who won the country’s hearts and minds
may soon be on her way out.
It’s the kind of
rise-and-fall story everyone loves to read.
* * *
Chapter 1:
Revelation in Rostock
Let’s give our
novel a title: Die Kanzlerin. The novelist will need a strong opening
scene to draw readers in. He picks Merkel’s famous meeting with a
Palestinian refugee in the Hanseatic city of Rostock. The girl is 14
years old. Her family faces deportation. Merkel, coolly, tells her
that Germany cannot accept all asylum applications.
“Politics can be
hard sometimes,” she says, a statement that reflects her own
experience as a longtime politician. The writer pauses to show, in a
series of flashbacks, how Merkel became Merkel. She is, at that
point, midway into her third term as chancellor, and she’s
emotionally hardened by years of governing a people who fear nothing
so much as change. Merkel has learnt not to rock the boat.
When the pretty
Palestinian bursts into tears, Merkel is visibly shaken. Awkwardly,
she pats the girl on the shoulder. The Merkel epiphany, the novelist
might call it: The moment the chancellor realizes she cannot go on
with politics-as-usual. For so many years — Merkel says to herself
as she rests her hand on the girl’s hair — she accumulated power.
She’s never tested its limits. Now she’s ready to give it a go.
* * *
Chapter 2: Sing a
happy tune
A few weeks later,
Europe faces a humanitarian crisis. Thousands of refugees are
stranded in Hungary, and Merkel jumps into action, working the
phones. “Yes, yes,” she says in her German-accented English. “You
send them here and we call them welcome!”
There’s an element
of comedy to the scene, as Merkel experiences her second spring.
Baffled aides wonder what tune their boss is humming during morning
briefings. It’s “Happy” by Pharrell Williams. In Munich, young
Germans cheer arriving refugees. In Berlin, Merkel tells her security
personnel to get lost and strolls through the Tiergarten, singing:
“Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth.”
The novelist would
pay special attention to Merkel’s language. She used to be known
for her foggy rhetoric — a device, some say, to keep people
guessing. Now, she speaks loudly and clearly. “We can manage,”
she declares. And then, directed at those who really don’t want to
manage: “If we have to apologize for showing a friendly face to
people in need, this is not my country!”
Happiness makes
Merkel dizzy to the point of carelessness. Stupidly, she fails to
coordinate her policy with EU partners or German lawmakers. Then, in
a television interview, she says that in today’s globalized world,
borders cannot be closed anymore. The statement shocks her party’s
conservative base. She has drastically changed her tune.
Merkel’s critics
used to call her the perfect leader for angst-ridden Germans because
she lulled them into a false sense of security. No longer. She wants
to speak truth to the people. For the first time in her life, she
feels truly liberated. Merkel unbound.
* * *
Chapter 3: Bavarian
bust-up
Enter our next
protagonist. Let’s not have an outright villain — let’s have
Horst Seehofer. He and Merkel are erstwhile allies, but lately he has
become increasingly irate. They schedule a confidential meeting in
the Taschenbergpalais hotel in Dresden, half-way between Berlin and
Munich.
Merkel, still high
on Willkommenskultur-adrenalin, misjudges the Bavarian premier’s
mood. She tells him what her open-border policy has done for
Germany’s image abroad. “I’m in the running for the Peace
Prize, Horst,” she says, laughing and somewhat proud. “You know
what the people call me in the Middle East? They call me the Angel of
Light!”
Seehofer has no time
for banter. Thousands of refugees arrive every day — and they cross
the border right into Bavaria, a bastion of German conservatism.
Bavaria is where the late Franz Josef Strauss vowed there “shall be
no party to the political right of the CSU.” It’s his goddamn
duty to keep voters who might otherwise vote for the far-right AfD
happy, Seehofer tells Merkel. And she’s making his life miserable.
Merkel shrugs off
his warnings. Seehofer loses it. He calls her policy a “rule of
injustice,” and worse. Let’s see them have a proper fight here.
Swearing. Slamming doors. Meissen china shattered to pieces. Exit
Seehofer.
Merkel, bewildered,
steps onto the balcony and looks at the beautiful city of Dresden
below her. Let’s assume for the sake of drama that an angry crowd
of protesters happens to pass by the hotel. Unaware that they are
being watched by the chancellor, they hurl a stream of invective at
her. “Traitor to the people,” they shout. Public opinion, Merkel
suddenly realizes, has shifted. Hiding behind the balustrade, she
wonders for the first time: “Is this still my country?”
Then she picks
herself up and says: “Oh well, we’ll find out soon enough.
Something’s going to happen, one way or the other.” This is pure
artistic license, of course. The writer needs a transition to what’s
coming next. We’re talking New Year’s Eve, we’re talking
Cologne.
* * *
Chapter 4: Where’s
the love?
Was there a specific
point in time when Merkel changed her mind and decided to backtrack?
In real life, we don’t know. In fiction, we can.
During a morning
briefing in early January, Merkel gets the news that hundreds of
young men assaulted women in front of Cologne Cathedral. She tells
aides that she wants a copy of every police report. One detail, in
particular, holds her attention. A perpetrator tells officers, “You
have to treat me nicely. Frau Merkel invited me.”
The quote is widely
circulated in German and international media. Merkel’s aides giggle
— they think it’s kind of funny. Merkel doesn’t. She knows the
Germans well enough. They can be a generous people. But they hate
nothing more than being taken for a ride.
Merkel leaves the
chancellery early that day. At home, she takes an aspirin, goes
straight to bed. Then, shortly past midnight, she wakes up, and her
mind is racing. She thinks of the Syrians back in September, holding
up their “We love you, Miss Merkel” signs in the warm autumn sun.
How can something
that felt so good turn out so badly? She didn’t do anything wrong,
did she?
Lying there, staring
at the ceiling — her husband, Joachim Sauer, fast asleep next to
her — Merkel feels let down by everyone. Fellow EU leaders
(unwilling to share the burden), CDU colleagues (scheming to get rid
of her), the German people (petty-minded and xenophobic). Now, even
the refugees seem to be losing respect for her. This can’t go on,
she decides. Willkommenskultur needs to come to an end.
* * *
Chapter 5: Anchor
down in Ankara
It’s March, and
Merkel is going through the motions. When Austria and other countries
decide to shut down the Balkan route, she protests — meekly. Truth
be told, Merkel, German chancellor and TIME magazine’s Person of
the Year 2015, doesn’t care anymore. Feeling empty and drained, she
calls her mother. “You need to pull yourself together,” her
mother — a Lutheran pastor’s wife, after all — tells her. Not
knowing what else to do, Merkel goes back to her old routine: Define
a goal, then figure out how to get there.
To Merkel, any
solution to the refugee crisis must involve Turkey. There’s no
alternative, she says. Classic Merkel. The problem is just that
post-open-door-policy-Merkel has lost her political acumen. Turning
to Turkey for help, she makes herself dependent on someone whom she
shouldn’t trust.
Our novelist must
turn his attention to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan now. Is he the villain
we’ve been waiting for? A madman, taking a bath in his new €500
million palace on the outskirts of Ankara and yelling at his
underlings, “If the EU doesn’t bow to our demands, send them
boatloads of refugees!” (There’s a long tradition of oriental
villains in European literature.) Or would it be smarter to go with
something more subtle? To show that Erdoğan is under pressure
himself, a would-be-strongman who has no choice but to prey on
Merkel’s weaknesses.
At the end of the
day, it doesn’t matter. As far as the writer is concerned, Erdoğan
is only a kind of tragic foil. He’s there to illustrate how far
Merkel has fallen. Just this once in her life, she tried her hand at
idealism. It didn’t work. But going back to pragmatism is tough,
and Merkel is paying the price.
The story comes to a
close at this point. Knowing that the real Merkel isn’t finished,
our novelist will opt for an ambiguous ending. Merkel may still
recover, he suggests, she may even get reelected. But one thing is
for sure: She’ll never be the same glorious chancellor she was back
in September when the world called her the Angel of Light.
In the last pages of
Die Kanzlerin Merkel returns from another humiliating meeting with
Erdoğan. On business trips, an entourage of aides and journalists
typically crowd around her. Not this time. She’s alone, traveling
at high altitude, thinking of the tune she liked so much just a few
months ago. What was it again? Ah yes, “Happy.”
Merkel’s plane
takes the Balkan route and crosses into German airspace. Peering out
impassively, she decides that the song was wrong after all. Happiness
is not the truth.
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.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário