She was wrong about everything — except Russia
“Merkel-Nostalgie” has swept a Germany grappling with war, a tanking economy and a collapsed government. The former German chancellor’s autobiography sold 35,000 copies on the day of publication, and Berliners queued for hours to have her sign their copies. As Angela Merkel said herself: you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Especially if your successor is Olaf Scholz — one of the weakest and least popular chancellors in the history of the Federal Republic, who has presided over Germany’s dramatic fall in economic and international standing. Thus, it’s perhaps not surprising that Germany has unexpectedly found itself longing for the stability and leadership symbolised during her 16 years in power, drawing voters back to her old party, the centre-right CDU. But is this nostalgia really justified?
