Now, though, just as Trump prepares to take his second oath of office and Putin keeps waging his genocidal war of aggression, it’s time for the addendum. Helpfully, Merkel herself is providing the occasion: She’s just published her memoirs, Freedom, a doorstop of more than 700 pages which she co-wrote with her long-time confidante and aide, Beate Baumann. (True to form and notwithstanding their intellectual intimacy and mutual trust, the two still address one another with the formal German Sie.)
For most of Angela Merkel’s 16 years as German chancellor it was my job as a journalist to observe and analyse her. And although I often disagreed with her policies, I can’t deny that her style of governing impressed me, especially once she became an antithesis and foil to wrecking-ball leaders such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin or America’s Donald Trump.
Unlike those strongmen, she was “the opposite of bombast”: low on vanity and intellectually honest. More generally, she was “post-heroic”: bent on neither conquering (Putin) nor dominating, polarising and self-aggrandising (Trump), but on “holding things together”, whether the thing was Germany, the European Union, the West or even the world. If ever a politician of a large country belied Lord Acton’s dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, it was Merkel.
