Merkel’s Book, Merkel’s mission, Merkel’s worldview

Angela Merkel’s new book will be launched with fanfare in the West but also in China. Tickets for Tuesday evening’s initial presentation of the former German chancellor’s 736-page opus at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin sold out online within minutes of going on sale a few weeks ago.
Merkel’s “Memories 1954-2021,” as the book is subtitled, looks back on her life from her childhood and youth in former East Germany, German reunification, and her political rise through the end of her 16-year chancellorship in 2021. The book is being simultaneously published as an audiobook and in translation in several languages, including French and English. After that, the 70-year-old former leader is expected to embark on a tour of major European cities to promote the work.
In excerpts released ahead of publication and several high-profile newspaper interviews, Merkel reveals her thoughts on current events and controversial issues. For example, she details her experience with US President-elect Donald Trump during his first term, the difficulties of being the first female candidate for chancellor, and her controversial decision to welcome almost all refugees in 2015. She also explains her relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin and her policies on Ukraine — which are now viewed somewhat skeptically by critics in Berlin.
Her memoir is unexpectedly coinciding with Germany’s federal election campaign following the collapse of the coalition government under her successor, Chancellor Olaf Scholz. According to Ralph Bollmann, a journalist and author of a Merkel biography, the election is likely to cast a long shadow over the reception of her book.
So, too, will other unexpected political developments internationally, such as Trump’s reelection, Bollmann says. “Back then,” he told DW, referring to Trump’s first term, “she was downright celebrated in the US as his liberal-democratic opponent. This will certainly help her with marketing now.”
Merkel will be in Washington on December 2, when she is set to present her book to the US alongside friend and former President Barack Obama.
Within Germany, Bollmann sees it as a “miscalculation” on the part of the Berlin establishment to think that Merkel is no longer popular in Germany because of what critics have called her conciliatory approach to Moscow. She still has “many fans in the country” and the book will sell well, Bollmann expects.
What will be more problematic than her foreign policy decisions, he guesses, will be her “unwillingness to reform her domestic policy.” For example, her reluctance to push ahead with difficult issues such as reforming the military or powerful climate change action.
“Everyone will simply quote what suits their agenda,” Bollmann hypothesized. What is striking, however, as Germany faces an election, is how all the major candidates for chancellor are trying to appeal to Merkel voters in their own way.
The main draw of the book will be to glean Merkel’s view of key people and events, says political scientist and journalist Andrea Püttmann. Never, he told DW, has “so much broad criticism, retrospective known-it-all attitudes, and hatred been heaped on a top politician as much as Angela Merkel. This is precisely why it is so important for her to “present things from her perspective to a broader public.”
As usual with such projects, it remains unclear how much money the former chancellor is going to make from selling her story. Several German media outlets, without citing sources, have cited sums from two to twelve million euros. No one from Merkel’s team has commented on these conjectures.
The closest Merkel got to responding to these rumors was when she was referred to in an interview by Der Spiegel magazine as a soon-to-be “multi-millionaire” and compared to Barack Obama, who has capitalized on his former job to great success. To that she said that, like Obama, she hopes to set up a foundation.
“I won’t be able to set up anything as big as Obama. But let’s see,” she said.
The choice of venue for her book launch is considered significant, as the Deutsches Theater is just a few minutes walk away from where Merkel resided in a divided Berlin. Considered one of the most sophisticated theaters in the city, Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer are regular guests. A passage from her book quoted in Die Zeit magazine reads, she went to the theater one a year with her parents, including at this very venue. She writes of how these visits “always remain in her memory.”
This article was originally written in German.
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