“Six minutes of applause” for the departure of Angela Merkel? Watch out for this message relayed thousands of times on Facebook

Six minutes of applause across Germany to greet Angela Merkel and her 15 years at the head of the Chancellery? This is what contains a long message relayed massively on social networks. Posted on May 22 in French, it has already been shared more than 148,000 times.

This text, available in full here, claims that the leader has received a “standing ovation” from across the country. He dwells on the German leader’s lifestyle and publishes what are presented as interview excerpts about her wardrobe or the upkeep of her home.

The Chancellor would have responded to a journalist on the fact that she regularly wears the same clothes: “I am a government employee and not a model”. Regarding household chores, she reportedly said: “I arrange the clothes, and my husband runs the washing machine, and it’s usually at night, because electricity is available and there is no electricity. has no pressure, and the most important is to take charge […] any inconvenience for the neighbors, fortunately, the wall separating our apartment from the neighbors is thick. “

This text has been circulating at least since last year in French, but also in English, Arabic and Italian.

FAKE OFF

The German media did not report a “standing ovation” or the fact that the Germans would have recently come out on their balconies to applaud the Chancellor, who is not due to cede power until September, after parliamentary elections.

In 2018, however, she left the leadership of her party, the CDU. BBC
report that she had then received a “standing ovation of more than six minutes” by the members of her party present at the congress in Hamburg.

A very commented wardrobe

Since her arrival at the Chancellery in 2005, Angela Merkel’s wardrobe has been the subject of commentary by the German and international press, which notes that she sometimes wears the same clothes. On the other hand, there is no trace of an interview where the German leader would have claimed to be “a government employee and not a model”.

The passage on the washing machine is itself inspired by a response from Angela Merkel during a forum in December 2020. She had confided that it is her husband who takes care of the laundry and wished they had a thicker wall.

In 2009, she already had been questioned by the magazine Emma son the distribution of domestic tasks and had explained having a household help, “but who does not do everything”. Joachim Sauer, Angela Merkel’s husband, is discreet and hardly appears alongside the leader.