According to CCTV news, on the 26th local time, German President Stein submitted a notice of the end of his term to Merkel, who has been the German chancellor for 16 years, at the resignation ceremony of the Merkel government.
Steinmeier said that under the German constitution, Merkel's chancellorship ended on October 26, 2021. With a new cabinet yet to be formed, Merkel will continue to lead the caretaker government and exercise related responsibilities. On the same day, the first congress of the new Bundestag of Germany was held, which meant that the current cabinet government officially became a caretaker government until the completion of the new cabinet formation.
Wen | Qin Liwen (from Berlin)
This year, Merkel will officially end her 16-year term as chancellor and bid farewell to politics once and for all. Looking back at Germany for the second half of her tenure, the first thing that comes to mind is a morning in late June 2016. That day, I woke up to the Berlin sun and birdsong, brushed my phone against the bedside, and saw the results of the Brexit referendum, and cracks broke out in all directions in the glass-solidified time. In 27 years of political observation, I don't remember such an earthquake-like moment, and the cognitive coordinates of many years have all begun to shake. My intuition tells me that everything that laid the foundation for the world order of my generation has vanished, that earth-shaking changes are enveloping everything, and that no one can stabilize the course anymore, not even "Mommy".
"We can get it done"
"Mommy Mutti" is the German nickname for Angela Merkel, which is both trusting and respectful, as well as kind and joking. During the first half of her 16-year term, judging by the vote of confidence, most Germans were very sympathetic to her work. In those years, Germany still gained a foothold under the impact of the global financial crisis and the euro crisis, and the economy grew against the trend, from the "European patient" to the world's fourth largest economy, reaching the highest financial surplus after World War II, becoming the world's most beloved country, and winning the world cup (the last world cup was won 24 years ago). For many ordinary Germans, it was an era of optimism and peace of mind.
In terms of personal public image, Merkel is also a calm and intelligent mother of a country, she showed the strength of female leadership, alone, has become the idol of countless young girls: in the face of the wind and rain, ten fingertips are stable, encountering no matter how big disasters and difficulties, will use the clear logic of the Doctor of Quantum Chemistry to explain clearly to the public, so that all political forces can sit together, and finally softly and firmly said: "Wirschaffen das." (We can get it.) In 2015, someone even spliced together the footage clips she called "Wirschaffen das" to do a rap song.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a press conference in Berlin on August 29, 2016.
The footage is taken from an interview conducted by TV host Ann Will on October 8, 2015, about Merkel's "open door policy" for refugees, and in May of that year, in the absence of a consensus between the EUROPEAN Union and domestic parties, Merkel announced that Germany would take in North African and Syrian refugees first, without a ceiling, shocking the world and creating one of the worst crises of her political career.
Merkel, known for her low profile, prudence and balance, had been delaying her stance on the refugee issue, but in the spring and summer of 2015, the European media's overwhelming conscience condemnation and the tears of a little Palestinian girl begging her to accept refugees struck at the weakness of her Christian from the former East Germany and touched her personal memories of her formative years.
Every year, Berlin commemorates the fall of the Berlin Wall and the large number of East German refugees who lost their lives on the way to West Germany during the Cold War. She opposes Trump's construction of a high wall on the US-Mexico border, and from the perspective of conceptual logic and practical operation, it is not feasible to maintain the border strongly. The Greek border guards have shot at the refugee ship, which has pierced the core of humanitarianism on which the EU is proud. In the face of millions of refugees who have nowhere to go, can they wrap the entire EU in guns and barbed wire and keep them out?
When EU politicians were fighting each other and rejecting any promises in the face of increasing tragedy and pressure, she decided not to resort to balanced diplomacy and make a leader in crisis decision: let Germany take the lead in accepting refugees. It was the only impulse and adventure she took in her political career, which unexpectedly led to the political suicide of her CDU and further tore apart the political scene in Germany and Europe.
On September 13, 2015, a Syrian refugee family from Damascus was temporarily resettled in a cultural centre after arriving in the western German city of Dortmund. Taking in Middle Eastern refugees was one of Merkel's most important decisions during her third term as chancellor.
In Berlin, the stronghold of the left, signs read "Refugees Welcome" appeared all over the city, and the liberal middle class cautiously supported her decision. "We can't live in a house of more than 100 square meters, but we shout 'we have no place' and let the children drown in the refugee ship." A Berlin tech entrepreneur told me during a forum coffee break.
On one side, however, there are hymns and on the other side are shrill and harsh noises, the latter played by the growing German right-wing groups and political parties since the euro crisis. The curses against Merkel and even death threats spread to right-wing websites and social media, and Merkel has been called a "damn dictator", and the right wing of the entire Western world, from the United States to New Zealand, has joined the insult. And the pro-right Trump has publicly commented that her policy of admitting refugees is "a sad shame." In Berlin, I also saw for the first time a right-wing parade, in addition to the bald-headed young and middle-aged neo-Nazis, but also middle-class men with white hair, with cards hanging on their chests that read "Merkel, the vermin of the people."
I was impressed that even in these hate marches, no one attacked her gender and used her gender to belittle her. In Europe, hatred of women needs to be masked, even in the public discourse of right-wing groups. I have not heard the words "She is a woman in the end, and the benevolence of a woman cannot govern the country" on any occasion in Germany. As someone who has been forced to endure misogynistic rhetoric for years, I unexpectedly feel lucky and at ease in the heart of this whirlpool.
Refugees passing through Hungary and Austria arrive at the Munich railway station in Germany on 5 September 2015. Pictured here is a picture of a refugee holding Merkel.
But the real confrontation took place in the conservative camp, though they were restrained in their rhetoric. Most EU countries refused to share their "due" share of refugee resettlement, and she was argued with by conservative officials at home, with then-Bavarian governor and later Interior Minister Seehofer said to have slammed the table with Merkel in several closed-door meetings. In the winter of 2018, a senior police officer in charge of immigration in Hesse said to me privately: "It is ironic that the most efficient and orderly state for refugee reception is Bavaria." He sighed with a tired face and said, "Our work is too much and too complicated for anyone to handle, and Merkel hasn't figured out what she's doing." ”
This was the backdrop to the Brexiteers' narrow victory in June 2016, and Merkel's adventure played a role in the door. Although she stopped the "open door policy" after accepting millions of refugees in Germany and turned to negotiations with Turkey to pay billions of euros to let refugees stay in Turkey, British voters who wanted to return to the glory of "their own autonomy" had already had doubts about the EU, and when they saw a large number of refugees pouring into the EU, they were even more frightened, and quickly chose "Britain first" and closed the door to the EU. In november of that year, voters who wanted to "make America great again" also chose a president who promised "America First" and waited for him to erect the border wall between the United States and Mexico.
"Work with dignity, leave with dignity"
On the day trump was elected president of the United States, I attended an Internet conference in Lisbon, and my Fellow Silicon Valley friends stayed up all night, went out in the morning with red and swollen eyes, hugged me and buried my head in tears, unable to accept reality. Facebook and Twitter are a sea of painful elegies. Mark Mccaughrean, a scientist at the European Space Agency, also told me about his heartbreak over Brexit – like many desperate Britons, Mark later withdrew from his British citizenship and became German.
But at the other end of the political spectrum, ultra-right terrorists threaten all of merkel's pro-Merkel colleagues, and a CDU president named Walter Lübcke was eventually shot dead by right-wing extremists in 2019. At the call of Trump and the right wing of European countries, hate attacks against Asian Africans have increased significantly. Many of my friends in Germany and the United States have been cut off for years because of their different political stances, their families have turned against each other, and everyone is angry, but no one can convince each other.
On 9 December 2020, the German Bundestag debated the next year's budget. Merkel defended the government's high budget and debt for 2021 and stressed that global economic power is changing.
From 2016 to the end of 2019, it is a period of soul exploration for the "mainstream society" in Europe and the United States. From the leaders of the major political parties to the well-to-do middle class, from liberal and leftist intellectuals to media opinion leaders, from shopkeepers to international workers, people argue angrily and ask themselves: What really happened today? More and more media, intellectuals, and scholars have begun to explore the injustices and violence that have been obscured in the political and social and cultural power structures of the West over the past 30 years: the wanton plundering of wall Street sharks, the algorithm-driven polarization of social media, the government's connivance of capital, the systematic violence faced by blacks, the failure of social redistribution mechanisms, and the failure of European and American cooperation mechanisms. Discussions with my friends at family dinner tables and cafes almost always ended with pessimistic sighs.
Among these issues, Merkel also has places that cannot stand the test. She focused on the development of commerce and industry, but overconsidered with capital and industry. The 2015 Volkswagen scandal of falsifying exhaust emissions data and the 2020 fake accounting scandal of Wirecard, a German electronic payments provider, "both exposed a problematic business culture and a culture of denial of responsibility that has left the German economy extremely vulnerable to illegal capital flows," said Constanzel Stelzenmüller, a German expert at the Brookings Institution.
Even so, since 2015, in the collective turmoil that has not been seen in the West after World War II, few leaders have shown a vision for the future and the ability to gather people's hearts, and the mature and determined Merkel is still the only example in this chaos. She was the only counterpart to "educate" Trump in his congratulatory message on his election: "Germany and the United States are bound by shared values — democracy, freedom, and respect for the rule of law, respect for everyone, regardless of their origin, color, creed, gender, sexual orientation, or political views." Time magazine in 2015 called her "prime minister of the free world"; the New York Times in 2016 called her "the last guardian of the liberal West"; and the media called her "the last leader of the democratic world", but she is said to hate the title very much, and her German Puritan self-discipline makes her instinctively reject all exaggerations and shows.
In January 1991, Merkel was sworn in in the Cabinet of kohl's government, becoming the youngest member of parliament in German history.
That's because she knows her leadership is changing. In 2017, germany's right-wing AfD, which started out as anti-European integration, anti-euro and anti-immigrant, was officially carried into the federal parliament by voters for the first time. Merkel's CDU, of Germany, suffered its worst blow as the ruling party since 2005. In 2018, when she led the CDU, which lost two major regional elections in quick succession, she realized that she had become a negative asset for her party and decided to step down as party chairman and no longer hold any public office.
"I wasn't born to be prime minister or party leader, I've always wanted to work with dignity in my own government and party work and leave with dignity one day." Now it's time to open this new chapter, and today, at this moment, there is only one emotion in my heart: gratitude. I am overjoyed and deeply honored. After her elegant and moving farewell speech, the audience stood up and gave a warm applause. Many Germans stood on the balcony and applauded for 6 minutes to pay tribute to her. They thanked this illustrious woman for all that she had dedicated her life to the German public, and she was the only elected leader in Germany without any personal scandals.
The meaning of "common destiny"
At that time, I and many media friends thought that she could already end the curtain, but no one thought that in 2020, when she was preparing to retire safely, the new crown epidemic broke out.
Merkel has exactly all the qualities it should have to deal with this crisis: firmness, sobriety, high empathy and scientific qualities. All those who have come into contact with her are impressed by the comprehensiveness of her knowledge, the speed with which she grasps information, the strength of empathy, and the extraordinary sobriety. My concerns with other Chinese about the German government's ability to respond to the outbreak are gradually turning out to be superfluous.
When the virus was finally confirmed to be human-to-human, the federal government quickly suspended flights to and from China, but shared flights with other EU countries, taking back all overseas citizens, permanent residents and family members who wanted to return, and the Red Cross provided them with free isolation centers. A Chinese friend of mine with a baby at the quarantine point was surprised to see a full set of newly purchased baby products and a microwave oven in the room, and on the daily box lunch, Red Cross volunteers painted smiling faces, suns, and wrote in German and Chinese: "Good appetite!" "Good mood!"
In December 2020, Heinrichs, head of the German Doctors' Association, sent the COVID-19 vaccine to a hospital in Frankfurt.
When the epidemic broke out in Italy, Germany quickly vacated a large number of wards, and the city of Berlin also built its own "square cabin hospital" using the convention center. Before the countries of southern Europe were able to contain the outbreak, Germany helped countries in southern Europe admit some patients. So far, the new crown beds in German hospitals have not been overloaded, and many beds have even been idle.
The Ministry of Finance quickly responded to the epidemic by providing subsidies to businesses and self-employed persons affected by the epidemic. Many artists and freelancers in Berlin also received government subsidies to allow businesses and individuals who were forced to suspend their businesses to survive the initial difficulties.
Just like a gift from heaven, an immigrant couple from Turkey has developed a highly effective COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, which is the BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine. Nothing better illuminates the positive aspects of Merkel's immigration policy and what "common destiny" means than this exciting story. In a survey conducted by the Pew Institute in the United States in September, Merkel was named the most trusted leader in 13 important countries in the world, far higher than her peers.
Merkel's scientific mind enabled her to quickly grasp the key information of the epidemic and to constantly explain it to the public in very clear and understandable language. But her hardest job is to persuade Germans and some local officials to remain vigilant against the virus in an era of fake news and anti-intellectualism, in a country where the government cannot use excessive coercive tactics. In September 2020, she delivered a heart-wrenching speech in the Bundestag: "Europe today stands where it stands, thanks to the Enlightenment and the trust in scientific knowledge, believing that it is real and will make people better." ”
On 18 January, the third COVID-19 vaccination centre in Berlin, Germany, opened. The picture shows people vaccinating the center. (Courtesy of Visual China)
From the very beginning, the saying that "covid-19 is just another kind of flu" has spread throughout social media, and unfortunately, some low-level mainstream media have also pretended to join it with an "objective discussion" in order to pursue traffic, but they have invited half-understanding experts to question what the government has done. Right-wing groups and political parties began to spread the word that "the lockdown under the pretext of COVID-19 is an attempt to gradually establish a dictatorship.". To my astonishment, many highly educated individuals and intellectuals have joined this frivolous and absurd discussion. Among them was Ulrike Guérot, a well-known political scientist I interviewed, and one of my family members. In order to "defend freedom", the COVID-19 conspiracy theorists and anti-lockdown crowds also organized many demonstrations at the beginning. Fortunately, as the epidemic progresses, the government no longer approves these marches, as each march is a viral carnival and puts the police in unnecessary danger.
Because of these civil inertial resistances, mediocre politicians in some places also refused to implement strict lockdown policies, so merkel had to repeatedly make Sisyphean efforts. By the winter of 2020, the epidemic will spread again. On Christmas Eve, Germans who had been holding back for a year began to gather, thinking that it was enough to stand outdoors, no matter how close they were. An anxious Merkel appeared on television and begged everyone to keep their distance and ask everyone to self-isolate before visiting the elderly.
Never in 16 years had she been so excited in public. She waved her hands and leaned forward, tears in her eyes, like a frustrated mother, but maintained her enthusiasm and patience: "I know how much love I put in building these hot wine and muffin stalls, but this violates the rule we all agree on, that is, to buy food and eat it at home." 」 I'm sorry, I'm sorry from the bottom of my heart, but if our price is to die 590 people a day, then I think it's unacceptable! All my German friends who listened to "Mama" were very touched, and many decided not to return to their parents' house for the holidays, or to consciously isolate themselves.
Merkel watches Baltic 1, a german wind farm, in a helicopter on May 2, 2011.
In 2020, I took a closer look at social democracy in crisis for the first time, and for the first time gained insight into the autonomous choices that humanity as a group, with a high degree of freedom and rights, can make. These choices may not all be wise, the learning curve of the group is long, and may even bring about local disasters, but on the whole, they seem to have a certain long-term, vague reason; and if people are robbed of all the right to negotiate for efficiency, then the loss of this society may be even greater. In Western society, this long test has only just begun. Fortunately, no leader could have demonstrated and explained better than Merkel in this lesson.
Source: Sanlian Digital Journal, Issue 10, 2021
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