There are news stories that don’t seem particularly significant on their own, but they do when you ask yourself the question: Is there more to come? Angela Merkel has left the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS). This was recently reported by “Spiegel”. The KAS is, as they say, a think tank close to the CDU. The ex-Chancellor and long-time party leader sat on the board. Friedrich Merz has now taken her place. Is there more to come?
The chairman of the KAS, Norbert Lammert, tried months ago to persuade Merkel to stay – in vain. Merkel has been around long enough to know that October 3, 2021 will now be remembered. In Halle she gave her last speech as Chancellor on the Day of German Unity. At the time, Merkel reported on an article that had appeared a year earlier – in a book by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. It said about the Chancellor: “She, who came to the CDU as a 35-year-old with the baggage of her GDR biography in the days of reunification, could of course not be a CDU product socialized from the ground up in the old Federal Republic style.” 35 years of life, nothing but ballast? Merkel was very annoyed by this, also, the Chancellor said in Halle at the time, because many East Germans “experienced such assessments again and again.” The word “ballast” was like a “small punch in the pit of the stomach,” she recently said on ZDF.
When she said goodbye to the KAS, Merkel announced that her decision was not directed against the foundation. She just wants to live her life freely. It is said that the ballast episode was not decisive either. Nevertheless, the question arises: How much of Merkel’s gradual withdrawal from the CDU world is personal retirement planning – and how much is growing distance? Isn’t the ballast episode an example of Merkel’s and the CDU’s realization that what never fits together only becomes alienated? Is it conceivable that she might even end up leaving the party?
Merkel made it clear early on that she no longer wanted to play an active role in the CDU, in the interests of her successors. During the 2021 election campaign, she was reluctant to be persuaded to appear for the candidate for chancellor Armin Laschet. She gave up the honorary chairmanship, also because, taken seriously, it would have involved participation in committee meetings. Now she is turning her back on the KAS – a few fewer meetings again. One would like to say: Merkel is shedding ballast.
But it seems very unlikely that she will say goodbye to the CDU completely. Merkel knows that she has a lot to thank the party for. And she can live with the fact that, conversely, some people today act as if Merkel had damaged the party. The fact that her former rival Friedrich Merz is leading the party and parliamentary group will not cause a storm of enthusiasm, but it will not drive her out of the Union either.
Merkel can read here and there these days that people in the CDU and its milieu reacted with dismay to the farewell to the KAS. It is said that companions felt left alone. The “Welt” headlined her comment: “Merkel is letting her party down.” Merkel is probably amused by an ambivalence that she has been observing for some time. A new beginning for the CDU is constantly being called for and pursued in order to overcome the Merkel era – and yet it always causes irritation when she actually takes another step aside.
