Schadenfreude – defined by Lisa Simpson as “a German term for ‘shameful joy’, taking pleasure in the suffering of others” – is everybody’s favorite German word.
Or so it seems, when reading the right-wing, and Brexit supporting press. The Daily Telegraph – a publication not known for its love of Angela Merkel – could hardly contain its freude after Volker Kauder, Merkel’s preferred candidate for the position as parliamentary spokesperson, lost an internal ballot to the relative unknown deputy Ralph Brinkhaus. The British paper, not for the first time, declared that this was the “beginning of the end” for Frau Merkel.
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