For the best part of two decades, European politics was dominated by Angela Merkel. As chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 2005 until 2021, she was admired by millions not just in her own country but around the globe. Freedom, her memoir, is an engrossing read. It reminds us of the rational, forensic, evidence-driven approach she brought to governing, and provokes a sense of nostalgia for all that she represented. If hers was a style of leadership already rare in the time she held office, it is even more so now. As autocrats and populists increasingly crowd the world stage, the loss of Merkel’s level-headedness seems even more acute.
The book is serious and sober, a substantive – if at times a little too densely detailed – account of her time in office and the state of the world. For all that she became such a constant figure in the international arena, Merkel was also something of an enigma. In Freedom, the reserved, slightly introverted personality we are familiar with is there, but she lets us see behind it.
Anyone looking for salacious revelations about her personal life will be disappointed. She deals with the breakdown of her first marriage (to Ulrich Merkel) in barely a paragraph: “One morning in the spring of 1981, I left the apartment we shared in Marienstrasse, a suitcase in my hand… Ulrich Merkel and I divorced in 1982; I kept his name.”
Merkel’s account of growing up in the former East Germany is written in spare, matter-of-fact style. She recounts stories of her brother being reported to his teacher for telling a joke about the head of state (“the state had no sense of humour”), her father to the Stasi for making illicit copies of a dissident author’s work, and Merkel herself to a university teacher for doing physics homework during a compulsory lecture on Marxism-Leninism. She describes the psychological blow of hearing that the 1968 Prague Spring had been brutally suppressed: “At 14, I learned that there are few things worse in life than shattered hope.”
She conveys with brutal simplicity the suffocation and fear of always being watched and listened to:
“Life in east Germany was lived constantly on the edge: you might wake up in the morning without a care in the world, but if you overstepped a political boundary, everything could change in seconds, putting your whole existence at risk. Then the state knew no forgiveness, and when it struck, it was merciless.”
There is no mistaking the achievement she feels in having survived.
“But why do I now feel something of a sense of superiority? Because, despite it all, this state didn’t manage to take from me something that allowed me to live, to sense, to feel: a degree of light-heartedness… the fact that the GDR couldn’t take it from me is what I feel to be my greatest personal victory over the system.”
Even the apparently superficial influences on her personality feel profound. The “official GDR”, she writes, “was the embodiment of tastelessness. Synthetic rather than natural materials, never any joyful colours… perhaps my present day preference for colourful blazers could be traced back to the primal experience of missing bright colours in East German everyday life.” The hallmarks of Merkel’s leadership – discipline and responsibility, rigour and reason, a steadfast commitment to democracy, the rule of law and constitutional protections – can all be traced back to her formative years in the East.
So too can an aspect of her political outlook perhaps not as well understood: a visceral hatred of inequality and injustice. Though a passionate proponent of German reunification, she rails against the economic hardships the process of re-integration inflicted on many citizens of the old East Germany, from shipyard workers and farmers whose livelihoods became uncompetitive overnight to young people struggling for work, who felt a sense of alienation from the new order. Fast-forward 20 years to the 2008 financial crash and – though pragmatism takes priority – we see the same disdain for economic injustice: “Deep down, every bone in my body resisted having to pay for the banks’ mistakes with taxpayers’ money.”
One of the genuinely delightful aspects of this book comes from the relaxation of another characteristic of her leadership – tight-lipped diplomacy. Her views about certain contemporaries are blunt. Her mistake with Donald Trump was to act as if “I was having a discussion with someone completely normal”.
On David Cameron, whom she tried to help over Brexit but became frustrated by, she has this withering assessment: “The path he had embarked upon… demonstrated in textbook fashion the consequences that can arise when there is a miscalculation from the very start.” In further evidence of her good judgement of character, Boris Johnson is almost completely ignored.
Merkel’s account of her 16 years as chancellor is surprisingly candid. It is clear that she takes criticism to heart, but her tone is self-aware and reflective. She readily
admits mistakes – for example, putting party loyalty over personal conviction in a vote on abortion in the early days of reunification; or, in a scandal over the transportation of nuclear waste, comparing radiation to baking powder – but this is often on matters peripheral to her legacy. On big issues, Merkel takes criticism head on. She defends herself, but not by simply asserting she is right. She sets out her reasoning and invites readers
to reach their own conclusions.
On her blocking, in 2008, of Ukraine’s first steps to Nato membership, she says that going ahead would have risked Ukraine’s security. Vladimir Putin would have been provoked, but Ukraine would still have lacked the full protection of Nato. On the suggestion German dependence on Russian gas left her in thrall to Putin, she says Russia can’t be wished off the map. Even under Putin, it has to be engaged with. On the accusation she imposed austerity on Greece during its debt crisis in the 2010s, she counters that in a common currency, if member countries want to retain responsibility for their own fiscal, economic and social policies, compliance with the rules is essential.
Not everyone will agree with her on these issues (I don’t on all of them) but no one can deny that her conclusions have been arrived at through a logical, painstaking process. If more leaders governed like her, the world would be a better place.
Unsurprisingly, the chapter on the Covid pandemic resonated strongly with me. I had often drawn strength from the responsible, precautionary, straight-talking approach she took to steering Germany through the crisis, which stood in stark contrast to the style of “leadership” I had to contend with from Boris Johnson.
Ultimately, two things from Merkel’s memoir stand out. First is the indelible mark her childhood in East Germany left, and how she believes this influences judgements of her. One of her more poignant refrains is that even after a lifetime of service to Germany, she finds her dedication is doubted: “Do people of my generation and origin need to prove time and again our loyalty to our reunited country… as if our earlier history, life in the GDR, was some kind of outrage?” Second is that behind the realpolitik, Merkel is a woman of deep principle. Her commitment to tackling climate change is a stand-out example.
No issue demonstrates Merkel’s doctrine more powerfully than her 2015 decision to allow refugees massing at the Hungarian border into Germany. Certainly, it was influenced by practical considerations on a continent with free movement of people and in a world where war, famine and climate breakdown are forcing increasing numbers of people to flee: “No one makes the decision to leave their homeland lightly,” she rightly says. But for Merkel it was above all the manifestation of principle, of a belief in the dignity of human life and the obligation we owe to each other.
“We can do this,” she said, in what became the defining phrase of that time. Her anger at the twisting of her words is palpable. She was accused of negligently underplaying the scale of the challenge rather than (as she was doing) talking up her country’s capacity and kindness. Merkel sees her chancellorship in two halves: before the migrant decision and after it. While she might not have realised at the time, she now knows it set the clock ticking on her time in office.
That she stood her ground in the face of a ferocious backlash is perhaps the best assessment of her character. No doubt she will be judged harshly on many issues, but even if only for this decision, history should treat Angela Merkel kindly.
Even though I occupy a different space on the political spectrum – centre-left to her centre-right – I have always admired Merkel. This book only burnished my respect. Bluntly, the world needs more leaders prepared not just to say but to mean the words with which she closes the memoir of an extraordinary life: “If we want to live in freedom, we must defend our democracy within and without against those who threaten it. We can do that if we work together. If we commit ourselves together… Because freedom cannot exist only for the individual, freedom must apply to everyone.”
Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021
Angela Merkel
Macmillan, 720pp, £35
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[See also: Ireland’s liberal centre conceals something darker]
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This article appears in the 27 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, The Optimist’s Dilemma