Status: 05.12.2021 02:42 a.m.
Angela Merkel is expected to be Federal Chancellor for only a few days. Shortly before she left office, political companions paid tribute to her achievements – including one who was at times one of Merkel’s greatest adversaries.
The departure of Angela Merkel from the office of Chancellor is getting closer and closer. If it goes according to the plan of the future traffic light coalition, Olaf Scholz will be elected as her successor on Wednesday. Shortly before the change of power, several political companions paid tribute to Merkel’s work during her 16-year term in office.
In a guest article for “Bild am Sonntag”, the outgoing Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble praised Merkel’s “analytical skills”, “with which she recognized social changes and moods earlier than others, not only in my party”. From 2005, Schäuble was Federal Minister of the Interior in Merkel’s government team for four years, after which he switched to the post of Federal Minister of Finance.
Merkel has “changed our country in many ways,” continues Schäuble – and “with sober sovereignty”. As “perhaps the most important personal merit” he calls Merkel’s “balanced political style, which also ensured trust and confidence in our country among neighbors and partners”.
“Incredible precision and tenacity”
The Executive Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, also expresses great appreciation. Also in the “BamS”, he calls Merkel an “exceptional political athlete”:
She has carried out her office with incredible precision and tenacity. In 50 years of politics, I have hardly met anyone of her stature.
The political relationship between the former CSU leader and Merkel was not always an easy one. Especially during the refugee crisis in 2015, Seehofer was one of the Chancellor’s sharpest critics and adversaries. An example: the “upper limit” for asylum seekers vehemently demanded by Seehofer, which the Chancellor rejected. The dispute also left its mark on the relationship between the two sister parties, the CDU and CSU, in the next two years.
“A positive piece of German history written”
The former SPD leader and Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel also emphasized to the editorial network Germany that the country remained stable “in a time of many crises” under Merkel’s chancellorship. That is “a great merit of this Chancellor, who has written a positive piece of German history with it”.
Merkel took over the Chancellery in November 2005. In September 2018, she announced that she would not run again in the federal election in September 2021. The Bundeswehr had already adopted the chancellor with the traditional big tattoo on Thursday.