For 16 years, Angela Merkel’s daily routine as Federal 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.”
But because her successor Olaf Scholz (SPD) is now doing these appointments, Merkel now has more time for her hobbies. In three special editions of the SWR crime podcast “We are talking about murder?!”, which were recorded in Berlin and were to be published this Sunday, opera fan Merkel talks to former federal judge Thomas Fischer and moderator Holger Schmidt about the murders in Richard Wagner’s mammoth opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen”.
The three episodes are titled “greed”, “revenge” and “vanity”. “There is no doubt that people are killed and murdered in the ‘Ring’. At the same time, they also steal, rob, rape, commit incest and burn,” 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 heralded the summer vacation of the couple Merkel/Sauer. Most recently, she was also seen at the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden in the “Ring” conducted by Christian Thielemann.
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 in the third act you’re there – that’s not the same concentration.”
In the podcast, Merkel reveals that she also sees analogies in the “Ring” to family life and also to 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 fought the then CSU boss Edmund Stoiber in the race for chancellor candidacy in 2002 lost. But: “Good politics thrives on the fact that the person making politics – that’s how I tried it for myself – doesn’t let themselves be driven by their own injuries, but deals with them and can then start again.” Elsewhere she says: “When 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 wouldn’t say that for myself either,” said Merkel. “Vanity is something that is very inherent in human beings. But it too has to be curbed.”
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 death on Fafner, who has mutated into a dragon, and finally about Hagen’s death on Siegfried. Incidentally, she was “a bit angry” with Siegfried, the former chancellor reprimanded – “that he’s wasting his luck like that”.
Merkel, who is now 68 years old, did not run for the federal elections last year. She now appears as a speaker from time to time – among other things 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 then talk about injustice in the criminal law of the GDR: “Perhaps you should take someone who has also experienced injustice in the criminal law of the GDR.”
You can listen to the SWR podcast “Let’s talk about murder” in the ARD audio library.
