(Berlin) It is on a hit from the communist era signed by a punk diva that Angela Merkel, visibly moved, bade farewell to the armed forces on Thursday, less than a week before leaving the chancellery .
The army paid him homage to the torch at the end of the day during a ceremony carefully codified and named Grössen Zapfenstreich.
Before closing her sixteen years in power next Wednesday and handing over to Olaf Scholz, the Chancellor, like her predecessors, attended this military ritual.
PHOTO ODD ANDERSEN, VIA REUTERS
German soldiers take off their helmets during the Grösser Zapfenstreich military ceremony during the farewell to Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Germany, December 2, 2021.
Eyes shining with emotion, the Chancellor briefly reviewed these “16 years rich in events and often very trying”.
“They asked me for political and human efforts, but they also always filled me”, confided Mr.me Merkel, in the presence of her successor, who will be elected chancellor on Wednesday.
Mme Merkel, a trained physicist, underlined in particular, in the midst of the fourth epidemic wave, how “the pandemic has shown the importance of confidence in politics and science, but also the fragility of this confidence”.
“Democracy lives on self-correction, on respect […] solidarity and confidence, also confidence in the facts ”, she asserted, in a country where the anti-vaccination movement remains influential.
The Chancellor, who chaired her last meeting on Thursday with the 16 coordination regions of the fight against COVID-19, paid tribute to “all those who are fighting with all their might against the fourth wave […] doctors, nurses, vaccination teams ”.
Like these predecessors, Mme Merkel was given the opportunity to order the soundtrack of the ceremony from the band of the Bundeswehr, the German army.
Among his three musical choices is a 1974 hit: From Hast den Farbfilm vergessen (“You forgot the color film”) by East German punk diva Nina Hagen.
A wish widely commented on in recent days in Germany where Mr.me Merkel is best known for her taste for opera and her annual visit to the Bayreuth Festival.
Asked at a press conference on Thursday about this choice, she explained that it reminded her of her twenty years in communist East Germany.
East German Culture
“This song was a highlight of my youth […] The song is also from East Germany and, coincidentally, it is still played in an area that used to be my constituency. Everything is in agreement today, ”observed the 67-year-old leader.
Angela Merkel was born in the port city of Hamburg before her father, pastor and teacher, decided to take the whole family to live in the GDR to preach the gospel.
In her recent farewell speeches, she has repeatedly paid tribute to an East German culture which has tended to disappear from collective memory since Reunification.
In this song, Nina Hagen, known in the 1980s for her powerful voice and extravagant demeanor, criticizes her lover for forgetting the color film for vacation photos, in an era before pixels, phones. smart phones and digital photography.
Some saw it as a mark of irony from the Chancellor after 30 years of career in a political environment dominated by men.
“By choosing a song that many bellow at the kitchen table on the birthdays of the family’s uncle, the Chancellor once again demonstrates the finesse of her humor” greeted the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel.
The title did not appear in the register of the Bundeswehr, which had to make an express adaptation, confided the leader of the fanfare to the press.
The musicians were on more familiar ground with the rest of the Chancellor’s selection: a ballad from the ’60s Für mich soll’s rote Rosen regen (It should rain red roses for me) and a religious hymn.