Under the motto “So what is my country?” Angela Merkel answered questions from the journalist and author Alexander Osang.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin Former Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) has given an insight into why she does not want to comment on current issues after leaving office. “I am Chancellor a. D.”, said Merkel on Tuesday evening in Berlin. She is not a “normal citizen”. You have to be even more careful to say something about current things – whether the 9-euro ticket is good or not. It’s not her job to give advice from the sidelines.
For 16 years, everything that was somehow relevant passed her table. She never shied away from responsibility. She said that she wanted to recover first and gain some distance.
At the event organized by the Aufbau Verlag and the Berliner Ensemble, Merkel spoke to the “Spiegel” reporter Alexander Osang. She strongly condemned the Russian attack on Ukraine. “This is a brutal attack that violates international law, for which there is no excuse.” The attack was a big mistake on Russia’s part.
It was not possible to create a security architecture that would have prevented the war, Merkel said. At the same time, she described the attack as a “great tragedy”. “What I naturally asked myself is: what might you have missed?” she said. “If more could have been done to prevent such a tragedy – I already consider this situation to be a great tragedy – it could have been prevented. And that’s why you ask yourself, and of course I keep asking myself these questions.”
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She rejected responsibility for the lack of investment in the Bundeswehr – and indirectly assigned it to the former coalition partner SPD. “Now I’m so glad that we’ve finally decided, now that the whole world has armed drones, that we’ll buy some too. And it wasn’t my fault that certain other things couldn’t take place,” Merkel said. And: “It was a very tough struggle to invest in military deterrence at all.”
Performance in the Berlin Ensemble.
(Photo: Getty images)
Nevertheless, Merkel found words of praise for her successor and his government. The transition of government went very well, said Merkel. There are people at work who are not “newcomers” and who know the situation.
When asked how she was doing, the 67-year-old said she was doing very well personally. Merkel talked about long hikes in winter on the Baltic Sea, she had listened to many podcasts. She didn’t get bored, she got through the days really well. She used to only have “appointments, appointments, appointments”. She is coping very well with her new phase of life.
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