Frau Chancellor's last tour
Komsomol member, not an athlete
On Thursday, the German Chancellor is to leave for an official visit to Washington. Unless, of course, something extraordinary does not prevent it.
In the end, fate turned out to be completely unfavorable to Angela Merkel. But the majority of German citizens will not spit in her back. The country, which has been greatly renewed mentally during its reign, has managed in many respects to remain the same country that has experienced the happiness of unification not so long ago.
And Angela Merkel will not be forgotten that she, who grew up in the GDR, in fact, by her own example, demonstrated that the well-fed West of the country had no need to absorb or subjugate the unassuming but hardworking East.
The future leader of the Christian Democratic Union and Chancellor of the Federal Republic, Angela Dorothea Kasner was born in 1954 in Hamburg, but the family soon moved to the GDR - behind the Iron Curtain. The girl studied quite well, was a pioneer and was a member of the FDJ - the Union of Free German Youth.
She visited the USSR and never hid the fact that she sang "Friendship - Freundschaft" with pleasure and marched with the Komsomol members from Moscow and Leningrad. At one of the youth parties she met her first husband, physicist Ulrich Merkel, with whom they got married in the Lutheran church in the town of Templin.
Incidentally, this fact somehow does not fit with the fact that in the GDR, allegedly with ideology, everything was much tougher than in the USSR. And the young Angela by that time already knew one of the famous German dissidents - the writer Rainer Kunze.
For his collection "Amazing Years" about student life, he was expelled from the Writers' Union of the GDR and actually forced to emigrate. Merkel graduated from the same Karl Marx University in Leipzig as Kunze, only the faculty was not journalism, but physics.
Several years of work at the Academic Institute of Physical Chemistry brought Angela Merkel both her doctoral degree and work in the Youth Union, which she herself always calls “cultural and educational”. And at the same time, acquaintance with many opposition-minded scientists and politicians.
Most likely, she should be considered a great success that she did not join the SED, although she had all the opportunities for this. The middle of the 80s was the time of the beginning of changes not only in the USSR, but also in Germany, although hardly anyone could have expected that the unification would happen so quickly. And to put it bluntly - almost painless.
The path to the heights of power for Angela Merkel took shape in many ways by itself, she just joined the ranks of the communists in time, but a new party - Democratic Breakthrough. There were colleagues who appreciated the achievements of the young physicist in the cultural and educational field.
The Berlin Wall fell without any direct participation from Angela Merkel, although she, of course, was happy about it. But already in February 1990, Physics Doctor A. Merkel became the assistant to the leader of the "Democratic Breakthrough" Wolfgang Schnur - a lawyer who successfully defended young people who refused conscription, dissidents and human rights activists.
But the main thing was different - he knew Horst Kasner, the father of Angela Merkel, very well. However, Cord, who made Angela the de facto press secretary, soon had to leave. Before the first elections in Germany, which was marching towards unification, a dossier on Cord was published, indicating his cooperation with the Ministry of State Security of the GDR.
The young and politically not too mature Merkel, most likely, was prompted to join the CDU by the victory of the Alliance for Germany with 41 percent of the vote. He relied not only on the Democratic Breakthrough, which had less than a percent, but also on the East German CDU, which soon merged into a single party.
Lutheran Angela could shamelessly change political priorities, which she did together with Lothar de Mezières, the last head of the GDR government. She herself became his deputy press secretary and in this position met with all the leading German politicians.
Federal Chancellor, CDU Chairman Helmut Kohl honored Angela with a personal conversation. Already in December 1990, just two months after the unification of Germany, Merkel won elections in one of the districts of Pomerania. At the same time, she already had a high sixth place in the party list.
The rapid leap to the heights of power began with the post of Minister of Youth and Women's Affairs. Then there was the environmental ministry, where Frau Merkel was getting in the way of the “greens” that were gaining strength. And after only a year, she is already mercilessly dealing with those who actually opened the doors to her in big politics.
Angela Merkel very skillfully took advantage of the scandal over the illegal financing of the CDU, when Helmut Kohl took all the blame. She realized in time that the time had come to urge the party to decisively break with the old guard:
“The party is obliged to take the first independent steps, to believe in itself that even without the“ old war horse ”, as Helmut Kohl himself called himself, it is capable of continuing the struggle against political opponents. As a teenager in puberty, the party must break away from the parental home and go its own way. "
Uncrowned queen
Merkel took over the CDU after Kohl's main competitor, Wolfgang Schäuble, was implicated in the same financial scandal. The 46-year-old politician, who went through the school of legislative and executive power, by that time held the post of Secretary General of the CDU, more likely a technical one, like Stalin once in the CPSU (b).
But, as if exactly according to his behests, she managed to make herself in this post indispensable for the majority of her comrades-in-arms in the party. At the CDU convention in April 2000, 897 out of 935 deputies voted for Merkel. She did not know such success in ordinary elections. And then she led the CDU to a streak of victories in local elections. And finally, under her leadership, the party ousted the red-green SPD / environmentalist coalition in the Bundestag as well.
However, it took the Christian Democrats, led by Merkel, almost five years to win. The first big success was not very convincing - it was necessary to unite with the Bavarian revanchists from the CSU. But the very tenure of Angels as Federal Chancellor dragged on for a decade and a half.
Her victory was considered by many to be purely female, although Angela Merkel was not only the first woman in such a post, but also the youngest chancellor in stories Germany. Let me remind you that in November 2005 she was only 51 years old.
But such an age and a kind of charisma of a meticulous housewife, most German women, usually indifferent to politics, took for granted. And even as a gift of fate. And it is no coincidence for German women and Germans that comparisons with the iron lady Margaret Thatcher or American ladies - secretaries of state Madeleine Albright or Condoleezza Rice - have always been in favor of the Angels.
Quite a few people called her the German queen - and the style is not the same, and the way of life, and the willingness to sit with a glass of beer in my own way with the Russian or French president did not dispose to this. But the uncrowned Angela Merkel certainly was.
And it still remains. And not only for Germany, but also in many respects for the entire united Europe, which seems to be bursting at the seams from the influx of migrants, Brexit and the pandemic. But it holds on and does not even count on overseas support.
Impolite visit
However, the same Merkel did not allow a divorce from Washington even under Trump and, I think, will leave any of her successors a good chance not to quarrel with Biden. It is not for nothing that Angela Merkel is making her final big visit to Washington.
She simply has no right not to plant straws across the ocean in case they again want to do something indecent with Nord Stream 2. Big business has long since taken the gas pipeline for granted; it remains to exclude an unpredictable political factor.
Leaving Americans even a minimal chance of pressure, Merkel could leave her heirs without an inheritance. What else, in general, is Germany able to bargain with "an old traditional partner"?
Confrontation with China over 5G technologies, games of political correctness and tolerance, continuation of the pandemic boozer or nuclear-powered Iran and its “left” oil?
Doubtful, agree, set. And at the same time, Washington will be reminded that the EU enlargement, which has already affected almost all of Russia's neighbors in one way or another, is somewhat akin to NATO expansion. But there, and there, Germany is indispensable. And let the Washington manipulators not be embarrassed by the fact that Russia will be left with the opportunity to manipulate Germany and a united Europe with the help of gas.
Nothing constructive can be achieved in such a game by depriving the opponent of his last trump cards. In the States, taking the departing nature of Chancellor Merkel, they cannot but take into account her colossal popularity, which was not undermined by either Covid-19 or the recent terrible flood.
If they try to put pressure on Merkel in Washington, this will certainly affect the results of the September elections in Germany. And postponing the decision on the same "Nord Stream-2", albeit veiled, but positive for Germany and the EU, you can run into an even harsher response from voters.
However, it is possible that at the very end Merkel will bargain with her American colleagues for something like “yes” downstream, in exchange for a promise to help Russia still guarantee solid, or rather acceptable, transit volumes for Ukraine and Poland. ... In reality, there will be enough Russian gas for everyone. And the only question is prices.
- Alexey Podymov
- rus.err.ee, ukrinform.ru, telegraf.by
Information