For 16 years, Angela Merkel’s daily routine as chancellor was scheduled: meetings of the federal states, European Council – the pre-Christmas dates are still in her head more than a year after her retirement from politics: “After 16 years you just know that.”
Because her successor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is now attending to these appointments, Merkel now has more time for her hobbies. In three special editions of the SWR crime podcast “We’re talking about murder?!”, which were recorded in Berlin and released today, opera fan Merkel talks to former federal judge Thomas Fischer and presenter Holger Schmidt about the murders in Richard Wagner’s mammoth -Opera “The Ring of the Nibelung”.
Three episodes: “Greed”, “Revenge” and “Vanity”
The three episodes are titled “greed”, “revenge” and “vanity”. “There is no doubt that people are killed and murdered in the “Ring”. Incidentally, there is also theft, robbery, rape, incest committed and pillaged,” Schmidt summarizes the long list of criminal cases in the four parts “Rheingold”, “Valkyrie”, “Siegfried” and ” Twilight of the Gods” together.
“I can now also do formats that I used to be able to do, at least very rarely,” says the former chancellor in the podcast. You once wanted to try “going in a completely different direction”. “It’s part of my newfound freedom.”
The trained physicist is a big Wagner fan and regularly attends the Bayreuth Festival with her husband Joachim Sauer. The festival traditionally heralds the summer vacation of the couple Merkel/Sauer. Most recently she was also seen in the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden in “Ring” conducted by Christian Thielemann.
The former chancellor on her “newly won freedom”
She uses her “newly won freedom” to talk about this great passion. She admits that Wagner operas also require her to concentrate, which she could only really muster during her active time on vacation.
“If you go to the “Valkyrie” from any event in everyday political life: you managed the first act in a hurry, the second act fell asleep slightly and then you are fully there in the third act – that’s not the same concentration.”
Merkel sees analogies to politics and private life
In the podcast, Merkel reveals that she also sees analogies in the “Ring” with family life and also with political business; After all, “everything about human strengths and weaknesses that you find in the world is dealt with on stage”. She will “not name any names now”, but she has recognized “certain motives” from time to time.
“It’s clear that there are injuries in politics,” she says, admitting that it was a “not exactly easy situation” for her when she was in the race for chancellor candidacy in 2002 against the then CSU boss Edmund Stoiber lost. But: “Good politics thrives on the fact that the person making politics – that’s how I tried it for myself – doesn’t let himself be driven by his own injuries, but deals with them and can then start again.” Elsewhere, she says, “If you’re so obsessed with revenge or vengeance that you can’t get it out of your head, then you should stop politics.”
The podcast is also about vanity – she is no stranger to it either. “To claim that anyone is completely free of vanity, I would certainly not say that for myself either,” Merkel said. “Vanity is something that is very inherent in human beings. But it too has to be curbed.”
Angry at Siegfried
Merkel and the two men talk about the giant Fafner’s murder of his brother Fasolt in the dispute over the ring – “Or is it manslaughter in affect?”, about Siegfried’s Fafner mutating into a dragon and finally about Hagen’s murder of Siegfried. Incidentally, she was “a bit angry” with Siegfried, the former chancellor reproached – “that he’s wasting his luck like that.”
The 68-year-old Merkel did not run for the federal elections last year. She now appears as a speaker from time to time – for example in September at the city anniversary in Goslar or for the 77th anniversary of the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” in Munich. She wants to publish her memoirs in autumn 2024, as her publisher recently announced.
At the end of the podcast, the listener has the feeling that things could have gone a little further for the former Chancellor. “Time flies a bit quickly” and one could “talk for hours” about the “Ring”. However, she declines Schmidt’s offer to come back and talk about injustice in the GDR’s criminal law: “Perhaps you should hire someone who has also experienced injustice in the GDR’s criminal law.”
