Angela Merkel -Or What Wikipedia doesn’t Know

I have a love-hate relationship with Wikipedia and deal with it in the same, almost insane way I deal with Amazon. I use it because it’s convenient, I trust neither. Both companies (or services) give me for a short time the illusion that they actually might care about me, the paying customer, or in Wikipedia’s case, the frugal donor, who dares to only give them the $1 they actually asked for. Come to think of it, perhaps it’s not so much a donation, but the tip I am willing to pay for a flawed service.

Today I read a comment on a post about Angela Merkel, which mostly repeated what can be found on Wikipedia, and, as usual, it covered only the tip of the iceberg.

Sadly Wikipedia is just not a very reliable source and should never be seen as an encyclopedia, but rather as a community of intellectual readers, who cannot always be trusted, which Wikipedia points out itself on a page called Wikipedia is not a reliable source.

Even after 16 years in office and 30 years in politics, the private individual Angela Merkel is vastly unknown. What we have seen was a woman holding a public office, the private person behind is, stayed hidden for many years and this is not a coincidence, but her principle. She wanted to maintain a certain normality, hoped to stay unnoticed behind the great public role, and, now looking back we know she has succeeded.

When others screamed and yelled loud, she got “things” done calmly. At the beginning of her career, they called her“Das Mädchen/The Girl.” She was seen as the protege beside the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl. Later the Germans called her “Mutti” another word for Mother, Mama, Mommy. The Mother of the Nation?

The feminist in me didn’t like the form of endearment. Calling a politician a mother is like denying her competence. We wouldn’t call a man in a high office “Papa or Dad?”

One associates Mutti/Mommy with an older woman, wearing a kitchen apron at the stove and not with a powerful matriarch. When you call the former German Chancellor Mommy or Mom, you don’t think of the Turkey agreement, or coalition negotiations, not of the meeting of the G-20 heads of state or of European policy, but that’s exactly what you should think of when you speak or write about a politician -male or female.

When you think about it, a mother is quite appropriate in the family context if the family agrees on these trivializations but to speak of mothers and girls when it is actually about chancellors and young politicians, it simply undermines the competence of the women. The words trivialize and underestimate the work these women actually do. They called her Mutti but it was not always with love. Still, I wonder how many women leading a nation will ever be called the same.

The people were not always nice to Angela Merkel, neither was the media. Some called her style “averageness”, which wasn’t meant to be a compliment.

Angela Merkel, hiking in Sulden, South Tyrol is legendary. We all have seen pictures where she and her husband wear the same hiking clothes year after year. Photographers were unwelcome in these picturesque mountains, it was a private vacation. Angela Merkel is a protestant, a Lutheran, for her, understatement is part of her philosophy of life. In her small holiday house in the Uckermark, an extension had to be built for the security personnel, Merkel, however, has not expanded her own house for 30 years.

One of Berlin’s biggest secret attractions is to meet Angela Merkel in line at the checkout in “her” supermarket near Wilhelmstraße.

Recently, this had become more and more difficult, but not impossible. The security personnel had to carry the shopping bags. Once she was asked what makes life as a Chancellor difficult and in her response, she was not talking about Vladimir Putin or the short-term horror of some politician, but about the supermarket visit.

“It’s not as easy as it used to be.” Once she wanted to buy artichokes in a jar. She had searched all the shelves but didn’t find what she was looking for and so she approached an employee. “Do you know where I can find pickled artichokes?” The employee recognized her and informed her boss. Then there was an uproar and the store manager tried to help, “But Madam Chancellor, of course, I can help. Look here, we have fresh artichokes.” She then asked again where she could find the artichokes in the glass because they were cheaper. It is exhausting, Angela Merkel once told journalists, to simply remain normal and to buy artichokes in a glass as Chancellor.

Angela Merkel was the most improbable chancellor Germany had ever had. She entered politics at the age of 35 – and before that, she lived in another country. Her relationship with the public is strongly influenced by her experience in the GDR (former East Germany). The SED regime politicized, restricted, and hindered her life as the daughter of a prominent pastor. A classmate once advised her to answer the teachers’ question about what her father was doing with “driver”. This sounds similar to pastors, but would then prevent the insults in the school. She couldn’t study what she wanted, she couldn’t travel the way she wanted. And once when she was in Poland and drove home with stickers from the free trade union Solidarność, she was detained at the border by the soldiers.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she experienced the fact that private things are private again as an achievement of freedom.

Angela Merkel felt often bothered by the press and the media. As we know, for them, politicians are actually like any other celebrity, about whom we need to know everything. So few people know that she, the childless Merkel, also took care of her godchildren as a chancellor the way she did before. There are many rumors about her relationship with her husband Joachim Sauer, but no information can be taken seriously, and so she reveals private things here and there because the greedy public wants it that way. Without much substance, she fed us crumbs out of pity but keeps her life private.

Germany said goodbye to its Chancellor, physicist, and Christian who neither succumbed to fashion nor was seduced by the spotlight. She did not buy any real estate in prime locations, or expensive cars, she didn’t build grandiose mansions, never rented expensive yachts on vacations, never traveled far. South Tyrol and the mountains, Italy, and the beach, suited her just fine.

She never followed invitations to trips or 5-star hotels, she could not be found at parties with the rich and famous. For 16 years she has never changed her style of wardrobe, never relied on expensive fashion brands.

At a press conference, a journalist asked Angela Merkel, “We can see that you are wearing the same suit, don’t you have another one?” She replied, “I’m a civil servant, not a model. I was hoping we would talk about my government work in this interview.”

Once, she went to the Opera and showed not just her love for classical music but also became for one evening an attractive woman. The tabloids were outraged. You can’t please them if you do, you can’t please them if you don’t. She never made that mistake again.

Will women ever be able to be in leading positions and not be judged for what they wear, but for how they care?

After her public appearance at the opera, I understood why she continued to wear the same pantsuit outfits over and over. She wanted us to focus on the subjects and not on her, and so we did. When there is no cleavage to distract, one has to pay more attention to what is said -and done. When there is no shouting, one has to listen calmly.

The Scientist who became the first female Chancellor of Germany will never be forgotten.

When asked what smart technologies Angela Merkel had at home and when her washing machine runs, Merkel replied unusually openly. “Honestly, that’s what my husband does. He usually does the laundry.” Even when asked if the machine would run at night because energy rates are cheaper during that time in parts of Germany, the Chancellor replied with a smile, “At night, but we have to make sure we don’t disturb the neighbors.”

We know she likes to eat roulade and potato soup, which she cooks herself. After the meal, they do the dishes together, a humble woman, married to a man who doesn’t need pomp to feel important either.

Sadly, Wikipedia doesn’t know any of this!