Mutti’s lore
Merkel’s moments
Her highs and lows, page 12 →
Scholz enters, stage left
Coalition talks begin, page 14 →
The filmmaker and gay rights activist Rosa von Praunheim once confessed that he loved Angela Merkel, but hated her Christian Democratic Union party. This sense of Merkel as a morally attractive, quasi-presidential figure above petty partisan ship is widely shared within Germany and abroad: during the Donald Trump years she was lauded as the last defender of the liberal international order; Boris Johnson described her recently as a “titan” of diplomacy; and even Alexis Tsipras, the hapless leftwing Greek prime minister who was forced by Merkel into years of austerity, cannot help but admire her “sincerity”.
A contrasting narrative of Merkel as an opportunist with no real political convictions but a portrait of Catherine the Great above her desk and a metaphorical dagger underneath it to stab male rivals
