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Fried – view from Berlin
Ironically, Olaf Scholz is injured while jogging – Nico Fried about a particularly unfair chancellor’s fall
© Illustration: Sebastian König/Stern; Photo: Henning Kretschmer/Stern
Olaf Scholz got bruises on his face while jogging. That’s not fair: no chancellor before was so concerned about his fitness.
True to the old adage, according to which bad luck often accompanies bad luck, the politically ailing has Olaf Scholz is now also injured while jogging. He now wears a blindfold. The bruises on the face are currently particularly inconvenient for the chancellor. Because with all due respect and sympathy for the injured Scholz, when you see the injuries, you immediately think that the chancellor is now walking around as his own political caricature.
His accident is also a bit nasty because he punishes those who are particularly concerned about their health. Scholz is likely to be the sportiest head of government that the Federal Republic has ever had. He jogs, rows and has also been seen on a bicycle. His predecessors were far less active: Konrad Adenauer played boccia, Ludwig Erhard smoked cigars, Willy Brandt is said to have swum in the pool of his official villa at least in summer mornings, Helmut Schmidt was a passionate sailor and chess player, Helmut Kohl occasionally went hiking with Franz Josef Strauss. After all, Gerhard Schröder had a career as a center forward for the TuS Talle football club, where he was called “Acker”.
Angela Merkel was the first chancellor to be thrown off course by a sports accident. When she was cross-country skiing in 2013, she suffered a “severe bruise combined with an incomplete fracture in the rear left pelvic ring” after a fall, according to the official diagnosis. For several weeks, Merkel was barely able to move, went about her business in a special chair in the Chancellery and used the time that she had because of canceled trips to read thick books. The Chancellor later liked to talk shop on the government bench about orthopedic issues with the former State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Brigitte Zypries, who had it in her shoulders. The two ladies visited the same specialist. Scholz could exchange views with Merkel’s former head of office, Peter Altmaier, who broke his nose when he fell down a flight of stairs in 2019.
Photo: Twitter/Markus_17x
Former chancellors were less athletic, but apparently more vulnerable in terms of health
It is interesting that earlier chancellors were less athletic, but apparently more susceptible to health, even if not every illness could have been avoided by more exercise. Konrad Adenauer survived a heart attack in 1962, Willy Brandt one four years after the end of his term in office in 1978. A party spokesman initially dismissed such reports as “shameless sensationalism” before the diagnosis was confirmed after five weeks in hospital. In 1981, Helmut Schmidt suffered from a dangerous cardiac arrhythmia.
Often secrecy was the rule, weakness not foreseen. Helmut Kohl was tormented by a painful prostate tumor when he had to fend off the attempted coup by internal critics around Lothar Späth at the CDU party conference in Bremen in 1989. He was then taken to the clinic.
The successors since then have remained healthy, at least no major illnesses have been reported. Angela Merkel occasionally used paracetamol to prevent colds. Trembling attacks caused by stress drew attention again in 2019 to Merkel’s condition after almost 14 years as chancellor.
Olaf Scholz caught the corona virus in 2022, he recovered in record time. At that time he kept fit with a stationary rowing machine. It’s quite possible that he’ll dodge it again more often now.