In 2013, German writer Carolin Emcke decided to read all of Angela Merkel’s parliamentary addresses as chancellor. She was curious to see how the genre, the so-called Regierungserklärung, was faring at what proved to be the halfway point of Merkel’s 16 years in power.
A few pages in, struggling with what she called Merkel’s blank, contour-less language, Emcke said she craved a mouthful of stinging horseradish, “just to stay awake”.
Those speeches were usually collaborations between Angela Merkel and Beate Baumann, her trusted office manager and adviser since 1992.
Three years after Merkel left office, the two have co-authored a 688-page memoir of the ex-chancellor. Readers may need more than horseradish to stay awake until the end of this solid if unspectacular round-up of Angela Merkel’s career.
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In an era of rising authoritarianism, her brand of compromise-driven politics – what she calls “lived Realpolitik” – already seems very far away. That may make the book of interest for future generations – or those unfamiliar with her career. For the rest of us, though, it’s hard going.
Freedom recycles much of what is already known of the former chancellor, from anecdotes to speeches, with only a few additions or insights and almost no humour.
What shines through is Merkel’s strong work ethic and sense of responsibility.
For instance, rather than party through the night on November 9th, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell practically outside her apartment window, Merkel popped out for two hours and was in bed by 11. Next morning, while the rest of the country slept off hangovers, the research physicist was on her way to work at 6.30am.
Two months later, Merkel left the science world and fell into politics, serving as a press officer for a minor East German party and then for the final East German government.
Then just 35, she had a unique vantage point on the collapse of an old order and the jostling for power and privilege in the new, united Germany.
Reading those chapters, it soon becomes clear that Merkel either has no eye for detail, a very poor memory or just isn’t trying.
Instead of recalling the sights, sounds, anecdotes or emotion of the era she (or, more likely, Baumann) delivers blocks of bland text about how the terms of German unification “sparked incredible levels of controversy and debate”.
The final deal of July 1990 ensured “the domestic groundwork for unification had been laid”.
As for the subsequent Two-Plus-Four Treaty, the green light required from the former wartime Allies? They “put their signatures to a historic document that drew a line under the postwar era in Germany. Nothing stood in the way of German unification now.”
The writing continues in this undergraduate thesis style. Her occasional flashes of detail, when they occasionally come, are curious. She doesn’t own a coffee machine, we learn, and at home mostly sticks to tea. Her April 2006 dinner with Vladimir Putin in Siberia was a brown bear steak with a “strong and gamey” taste.
“It was something quite special,” she adds.
All tell, little show, this memoir is strong on what happened but less so on why – and it gets worse as it continues.
There is a bizarre A-Z of organisations and groups Merkel met annually as chancellor, as well as a section set during a beach walk with Baumann, quoting each other at length.
It’s clear they are trying hard, but that their editor was unable, or unwilling, to convince them to accept an experienced ghostwriter to ask searching questions or knock their copy into shape.
Merkel’s punishing schedule eventually caught up with her in the summer of 2021 when, twice, she began shaking uncontrollably in public. Doctors could find no nerve issues and suggested her body was “releasing tensions that had built up over a long period”.
“This was good news in principle, if only my body hadn’t decided to enact that process in full public view,” she writes.
The shaking episodes must have been a nightmare for such a controlled politician. But Merkel offers no insights into the price she paid for power – and whether she thinks it was worth it.
At the same time the book demonstrates Merkel is clearly a thoughtful, intelligent and kind woman: her team remained remarkably loyal to her over the decades, which speaks volumes. As do her regular words of thanks, throughout the book, to the many people that kept her government and constituency offices going.
Even as a new round of debate looms over her legacy – on refugees, Russia and more – no one is questioning her work ethic or personal integrity. Nostalgia for politicians of this calibre is understandable, but cannot make up for what is missing from this memoir.
Early on in Freedom, Merkel recalls her view of the Berlin Wall from her daily train ride to work in the 1980s. Every morning and evening her “gaze roamed over places that were inaccessible to” her.
As she casts her gaze over her life, it’s hard to tell if Freedom was written by someone who is emotionally inaccessible to herself – and thus her readers – or someone who has chosen to withhold her emotional self, thinking readers won’t notice. The former would be tragic; the latter would be cynical. Either way, Freedom is a disappointing, dreary dud.
Derek Scally is Berlin Correspondent of The Irish Times
