St. Martin’s Press
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In “Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021” (published by St. Martin’s Press), former German Chancellor Angela Merkel writes about two lives: her early years growing up under the communist police regime in East Germany, and her years as leader of a nation that reunited after the fall of Berlin. The wall.
Read the excerpt below, too don’t miss Mark Phillips’ interview with Angela Merkel on “CBS Sunday Morning” December 1!
“Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021” by Angela Merkel
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Prelude
This book tells a story that will never happen again, because the situation I lived in for thirty-five years ended in 1990. someone said to me at the beginning of 2022, a few weeks after I left the chancellor’s office. He knew such stories, and he was glad that I had decided to write this book, because of its story. A story as impossible as it is real. It became clear to me: telling this story, drawing its lines, finding the thread that runs through it, identifying the leitmotifs, may be very important in the future.
For a long time I did not think of writing such a book. That started to change in 2015, at least a little. At that time, on the night between September 4 and 5, I had decided not to deport the refugees from Hungary to the German-Austrian border. I saw that decision, and above all its consequences, as a caesura in my chancellorship. There was before and after. It was then that I took it upon myself to explain, one day when I was no longer chancellor, the sequence of events, the reasons for my decision, my understanding of Europe and globalization combined with it, in a way that only a book could do. I didn’t want to leave more meaning and explanation to other people.
But I was in position. The 2017 Bundestag elections followed, and my fourth term in office. In its last two years the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic was a prominent theme. This pandemic, as I have said publicly many times, has made great demands on democracy, at the national, European and global level. This also made me broaden my perspective and not just write about refugee policy. If I was going to do it at all, I had to do it right, I told myself, and if I was going to do it, I was going to do it with Beate Baumann. He has been mentoring me since 1992, and is an eyewitness.
I stepped down on December 8, 2021. After sixteen years I left it, as I said in the Bundeswehr Military Tattoo in my honor a few days ago, with joy in my heart. I was finally looking forward to that moment. That’s enough. Now it was time for me to take a break and rest for a few months, leaving the busy political world behind me, to start a new life in the spring, little by little and little by little, still a public life, but not an active political one, find out. the proper rhythm of social evolution—then write this book. That was the plan.
Then came February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.
It became clear that writing this book as if nothing had happened was out of the question. The war in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s had already shaken Europe. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a serious threat. It was a violation of international law that shattered the European peace that existed since the Second World War and was based on the preservation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of its states. A great disappointment followed. I will write about that again. But this is not a book about Russia and Ukraine. That would be a separate book.
Rather, I would like to write the story of my two lives, the first until 1990 under a dictatorship and the second from 1990 under democracy. At the time when the first students hold the book in their hands, the two halves are of equal or equal length. But in reality, these are not two lives. In fact they are one life, and the second part cannot be understood without the first.
How is it that, after spending the first thirty-five years of her life in the GDR, a woman was able to take the most powerful office in the Federal Republic of Germany and hold it for sixteen years? And that he left it again without stepping down while in office or being voted out? What was it like growing up in East Germany as a teacher’s child, and studying and working under totalitarian conditions? What was it like to experience the fall of the empire? And the sudden relief? That’s the story I want to talk about.
Of course, my account is very dependent. At the same time, I intend to reflect honestly. Today, I’m going to identify my poor judgment and defend the things I think I did right. But this is not a complete account of everything that happened. Not everyone who might expect, or was expected to, appear on these pages will do so. For that I ask for your understanding. My goal is to establish the focal points through which I try to control the complexity of the material, and let people understand how politics works, what principles and methods exist—and what leads me.
Politics is not witchcraft. Politics is made by people, people with their influences, experiences, vanity, weaknesses, strengths, desires, dreams, beliefs, values, and interests. People who have to fight for the majority in a democracy if they want to make things happen.
We can do this—Wir schaffen das. In all my political career, no phrase has been thrown at me with such violence. No sentence has been so divisive. However, to me it was a normal expression. It brought out the attitude. Call it trust in God, vigilance, or just the willingness to solve problems, face obstacles, jump low and come up with new ideas. “We can do this, and if something stands in our way it must be overcome, it must be worked on.” I put it that way in my summer press conference on August 31, 2015. That’s how I did politics. It’s the way I live. That’s how this book came about. With this attitude, and what has been learned, everything is possible, because it is not only politics that has an impact on it—everyone has a role to play.
Angela Merkel
And Beate Baumann
Berlin, August 2024
From “Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021” by Angela Merkel. Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Press.
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