Angela's dark side

The autobiography of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel – Freihet ('freedom') – has received an uncritical reception in the Norwegian press. None of the reviews mention alternative sources that could challenge Merkel's polished self-image and a "spectacular political Cinderella story": her career path from a priest's daughter and a village girl in the German province to the world's most powerful woman. The myth blurs the distinction between fiction and reality and cements an already weakly developed source-critical awareness. The reviewers are well helped by NTB's photo of Merkel and Putin from 2007: Cinderella is visiting Moscow and is threatened by the evil dictator's fearsome dog, a black Labrador.

Readers also receive excellent assistance from Merkel herself, who does not comment on a single one of the many Merkel biographies that have come like pearls on a string since journalist Wolfgang Stock published the first one in 2000.

Merkel received her doctorate in physics in East Berlin"Half-hidden in the research laboratory, Angela Merkel had managed to avoid becoming a folder in the archive," says a review of Merkel's time in the GDR. But Merkel has actually a folder in the Stasi archive. One of her colleagues was the physicist Frank Schneider, with whom she shared an office. He regularly reported to the Stasi under the codename "Bachmann". This was already mentioned in Stock's biography and more extensively documented twelve years ago by journalists Ralf Georg Reuth and Günther Lachmann in the book The First Life of Angela M. ('Angela M's First Life', 2013). IN Freihet Merkel still does not mention that Schneider was Station agent. Freihet has become “a fascinating book,” writes one reviewer. Another confides to us that the first 200 pages “are so good that it is difficult to put the book down.” But the many spies in Merkel’s entourage could have made the first part even more exciting.

Characterized by an authoritarian regime?

Ingrid Brekke stated in her Merkel biography from 2016: “How close Angela Merkel’s father actually was to the GDR regime has been extensively debated.” The closeness to The GDR regime when it comes to both father and daughter, is a starting point for the criticism that is now coming from the right: Merkel's 16 years as chancellor are portrayed as a kind of continuation of the SED and Honecker's authoritarian regime.

The famous journalist Gunter Gauss (1929–2004) interviewed Merkel on German television when she was given her first ministerial post in 1991. The interview is not mentioned in her autobiography. She said at the time that she was skeptical of grassroots democratic groups and prioritized the practical over tedious internal discussions. “Maybe I have an authoritarian attitude,” she added. This statement, taken in isolation, is the foundations of the finds for those who now emphasize Merkel's GDR connections.

But Gaus objected that he knew many authoritarian people in West Germany as well. Merkel replied that authoritarian attitudes had nothing to do with it. East Germany to do. She wanted structure in political work, which requires authority.

Critical biographies from the right

Around the same time as the release of Merkel's brick Freihet three extremely critical ones came out biographyare in Germany, all written by frustrated conservatives with a clear political agenda. The message is that Angela Merkel has destroyed the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) party and is responsible for the political, economic and cultural problems Germany is currently struggling with. There are a number of new facts, but also a lot of speculation and a lot of right-wing populist propaganda in the books.

Merkel's 16 years as Chancellor are portrayed as a kind of continuation of the SED and Honecker's authoritarian regime.

Merkel has, through an alliance with the media, managed to portray herself as "Mutti", the motherland who takes care of Germany. In reality, the result of her policies is the chaos we experience today, the three critics claim. Discussed in the following:

Stasi agents

The book by Vera Lengsfeld (b. 1952) is titled I don't care ('Same for me'). Lengsfeld sat in the Bundestag from 1990 to 96 for the Greens, then until 2005 for the CDU. She left the party in 2023. In five parts, she disparages Merkel's policies, especially from the decision in 2011 to phase out all nuclear power to the chancellor's handling of the corona crisis. The title is a quote from Merkel's reaction to the refugee crisis, which is interpreted as a disclaimer of responsibility. Despite opening the borders in September 2015, Merkel suddenly became indifferent afterwards who was responsible: "Same for me, now they are here!" Merkel has not really had any political project, but one thing will remain after her, and that is the founding of the AfD in 2013, concludes Lengsfeld.

She also has a background from the GDR. Lengsfeld is a trained philosopher and was a member of the SED (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands) from 1975 until she was expelled in 1983. She was arrested in January 1988 and imprisoned for 6 months for attempted conspiracy (Zusammenrottung). Unlike Merkel, she was a civil rights activist. She was also a press spokeswoman for the Greens before the GDR government was dissolved in 1990.

Lengsfeld's lawyer Wolfgang Schnur (1944–2016) was one of the founders of the Demokratischer Aufbruch ('Democratic Breakthrough') party in October 1989 and was the party's leader from December 1989 to March 1990. Merkel joined this party when the Wall fell in 1989. Via Schnur, Lengsfeld had his sentence against going abroad shortened.

Lengsfeld is not mentioned in Merkel's memoirs. When rumors spread that Schnur was an informal collaborator (IM) for the Stasi, Merkel sought out Lengsfeld to get her opinion on him. Based on her experience as a Stasi prisoner in Hohenschönhausen prison, Lengsfeld believed that Schnur worked for the regime. According to Lengsfeld, Merkel became aggressive and accused her of spreading malicious gossip ("üble Nachrede"). Two days later, Schnur was exposed as a Stasi IM in all the media. Merkel then turned her back on him and demanded an effective investigation from the press.

Schnur gave Merkel's career a flying start by hiring her as press spokeswoman for the Democratic Awakening party.

Schnur was also a lawyer for the Evangelical Church. He spied on clients and church groups. He had a close working relationship with Merkel's father, the theologian Horst Kasner. Schnur gave Merkel's career a flying start by hiring her as a press secretary for the Demokratischer Aufbruch, of which he was chairman. Schnur and Kasner worked together with the lawyer Clemens de Maizière, who was also a Stasi agent. According to Merkel, it was always difficult to deal with Schnur; he was someone who never looked you in the eye, but always glanced past you. But she does not mention that he collaborated with her father, nor that Clemens de Maizière was a Stasi agent.

Maizière's son Lothar de Maizière was elected chairman of the CDU in the GDR in November 1989. He then became the last prime minister of the GDR, for the Allianz für Deutschland, which also included the Demokratischer Aufbruch. Merkel was appointed his spokeswoman. Their fathers had worked closely together. Lothar de Maizière was also accused of spying for the Stasi, which he denies in his 2010 autobiography. However, the accusations did not result in him receiving any leading position in the CDU. He resigned from his party positions during 1991.

Keefers spionthriller

Gerold Keefer is an outsider in Merkel research. He has a background as a graduate engineer from Stuttgart. The Chancellor Who Came in from the Cold ('The Chancellor Who Came in from the Cold') alludes to John le Carré's famous spy thriller. Keefer is affiliated with the AfD and has published on the right-wing populist online blog Ansage.

The contributors to this anthology are pseudonyms, such as a "dr. Ralf Schirmer", a pseudonym for the aforementioned Stasi agent Wolfgang Schnur, who recruited Merkel as a press spokeswoman for the Demokratischer Aufbruch. Another contributor is "Carl Czerny". Lothar de Maizière, who recruited Merkel as a deputy government spokeswoman in the CDU, is said to have gone under the codename "Czerny" as an IM agent for the Stasi.

Merkel was the FDJ secretary for agitation and propaganda at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin.

Another of the authors is "Manfred Weih", a pseudonym for Merkel's physicist colleague Michael Schindhelm, whom she gives very positive reviews in FreihetWhat she doesn't mention is that Schindhelm was later revealed to be an IM agent for the Stasi, nor that he wrote the novel. Robert's journey (2000), where Merkel is depicted in a slightly disguised form. Finally, the pseudonym "Frank Bachmann" appears – the Stasi cover name for Merkel's physics colleague Frank Schneider.

Keefer points out that one of the many open questions regarding Merkel's biography is about her father, "why Horst Kasner preferentially joined church-internal Stasi informants, such as Clemens de Maizière, Heinrich Fink or Gerhard Bassarak and their script for the coordination (Gleichschaltung) of church and state in the GDR."

Another important point for Keefer is that until she reached the age of 30, Merkel was secretary of agitation and propaganda for the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ, 'Free German Youth') at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. The FDJ (was the SED's youth organization. This position entailed far more than buying theater tickets, which Merkel now Freihet trying to reduce this activity to.

Klaus-Rüdiger Mai on the support from the Stasi

Klaus-Rüdiger Mai (b. 1963) has a background from the GDR and has previously written many works on cultural history – and also a biography of Sahra Wagenknecht. He sees an “anomaly” in the fact that there were no consequences for Merkel when she was stopped at the border with the GDR in 1981. After a visit to Poland, she brought with her banned material from solidarity.

After a visit to Poland, Merkel brought with her banned Solidarity material.

However, his colleague and Stasi agent Schneider reported to the Stasi that Merkel was not an oppositionist, but had a trustworthy relationship with the GDR regime, “eine gefestigte Haltung zu unserem Staat”. By way of contrast, Mai mentions that theology student Richard Hübner was arrested the same year when he tried to smuggle Solidarity material across the border. He was interrogated for months and sentenced to one year and three months in prison.

Mai also ironically compares Merkel's policies to those of the GDR regime: "After 16 years of Angela Merkel as Chancellor, German trains have finally reached the same level of delays as in the GDR, and the roads and bridges in the country are approaching GDR standards."

Merkel has depoliticized Germany, according to Mai. She became famous for the phrase "Wir schaffen das" ('We can do it') during the refugee crisis. The real political question should have been: "Wollen wir das?" ('Do we want it?') But that was pushed completely into the background.

Power was more important than political content and ideology.

He interprets Merkel from the paradigm that she always had to be the best in class. That's why she has a hard time admitting mistakes. She joined the CDU by career considerations and not political reasons. Power was more important than political content and ideology. The driving force was to gain power and achieve great things. According to May, Merkel is driven by fear and panic about failing. Therefore, Freihet A bad title for an autobiography.

The patricide of Helmut Kohl

Merkel "is remarkably quick to get over the CDU's internal power struggles," a Norwegian reviewer aptly claims. For example, we are not told what she thinks about Helmut Kohl. Here, all the critical biographies provide several interesting perspectives.

Merkel herself quotes on a single page what she calls the main points of her article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on December 22, 1999. There she took issue with Kohl and the party's handling of the "gift scandal". Donations to the party had not been recorded. The move was already described the next day as patricide. The article was not just an attempt to sort out the black account issue. Merkel acted strategically and paved the way for herself. Cinderella showed her muscles: The reserved grey mouse suddenly appeared as the 'snake' Merkel. The move has been duly commented on previously: Gertrud Höhler, for example, printed Merkel's article as an appendix in her critical book The Godmother ('The Godmother') from 2012. The subtitle, according to Mai, is that "I am the future": Now I free myself from Helmut Kohl as a father figure!

After the attack on Helmut Kohl (1930–2017), she was nevertheless shielded from revenge from the former chancellor: Kohl stood up and promoted Spock's Merkel biography in 2000, praising her "openness and natural freshness." This interview is not mentioned by Merkel in Freihet.

Both of Kohl's sons have written biographies of their parents. According to them, Kohl had an extramarital affair with his 1990-year-old mistress Maike Kohl-Richter (b. 34), whom he married in 1964, in the latter half of the 2008s. As a speculation, Keefer suggests that Merkel may have used this as a means of pressure on Kohl. Merkel may have forced Kohl to support her despite her public execution of him four months earlier. "How would Kohl have coped in the spring of 2000 if he had not only had to take off his boxers but also his underpants?" Keefer asks rhetorically.

Fuels conspiracy theories

There are still many pieces missing from the enormous puzzle that Merkel's biography constitutes. The former chancellor has Freihet has not contributed to any new clarification based on what is already known. But through a deliberately evasive strategy, she has expanded the scope for conspiracy theories and insinuations. This is exploited to varying degrees by all three alternative Merkel biographies. Although they are written independently of the memoir, most of Merkel's time in DDR already documented in previous biographies. Merkel has largely reproduced parts of this material selectively without quotation marks.

What is certain is that Merkel has under-emphasized the collaboration between herself and the GDR regime. The close connection between her father and the regime gave her a flying start. Cinderella received career help from Stasi agents whom her father knew well.

On January 30th of this year, former Chancellor Merkel spoke out against her own party on her website. www.buero-bundeskanzlerin-ad.de. CDU party leader Friedrich Merz was accused of trying to gain a majority for a more restrictive refugee policy with the help of AfD votes in the Bundestag vote on January 29. The so-called firewall against the AfD to keep them out of government formation and cooperation was thus exceeded. Critics of Merkel from the right are now highlighting the analogy with the GDR concept of the Berlin Wall – as an anti-fascist wall against the Nazis in West Germany who were in NATO and elsewhere. History is repeating itself in an unexpected way.

According to this criticism from the right, the former chancellor has once again confirmed his socialization in East Germany. The paradox is that the right-wing populist AfD, the fascists, have the greatest support in the old GDR – those who previously wanted to keep the fascists out through the wall.

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