To come anywhere near understanding the enigma that is Angela Merkel it is necessary to explore her early life as a Communist activist in East Germany. Among the photo-shopped images of her displayed online, satirically portraying her in Nazi uniform, there is one genuine photograph. It shows her wearing the uniform of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ), the East German Communist equivalent of the Hitler Youth or Soviet Young Pioneers, in company with other members of the GDR nomenklatura.
In 2013, however, a new biography, “The First Life of Angela M”, exposed her as the former FDJ Secretary for Agitation and Propaganda (“Agitprop” at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. Agitprop was at the sharp end of the ideological war, involving the aggressive inculcation of Marxism-Leninism among her colleagues. It would never have been entrusted to a lukewarm Communist. Theatre tickets, anyone?
As a schoolgirl, Merkel took pains to learn fluent Russian – she could be seen learning vocabulary even while waiting at the bus stop – and at age 15 won the local Russian language “Olympics”. This was an obvious indication of her ambition: learning the language of East Germany’s Soviet masters would be of considerable advantage in pursuing a career in the Communist hierarchy.
Political analysts have struggled unsuccessfully to understand why Merkel, after winning the September 2013 German elections under her party’s traditional slogan “No experiments”, in mid-2015 startlingly invited countless numbers of migrants into Germany. Worse still, when this proved unsustainable, she arrogantly attempted to impose them on the other member states of the European Union.
Merkel, arguably, drove Britain out of the EU. Then her migrant quotas alienated Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and put them in serious conflict with Brussels. In German-speaking Europe the same provocation brought the Freedom Party into coalition government in Austria and, at home in Germany, the spectacular electoral success of the AfD paralysed the tired and discredited Europhile, globalist consensus. Including Theresa May, there are now two vicars’ daughters see-sawing precariously in the Italian Job bus of European politics. Welcome to Merkel’s New Weimar.
Hailed as “Queen of Europe”, while Merkel counterfeited the humble, shabby Hausfrau, her instincts remained discreetly imperial. Hitler always had a portrait of Frederick the Great in his office; Merkel has one of Catherine the Great in hers. Apparently her Russian sympathies are not extinct. Nor was the immigration ukase her first lapse into autocracy. Her absolutist ban on nuclear power, in the wake of the Fukushima accident in 2011, was impulsive and left Germany dependent on Russian energy sources.
at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. Agitprop was at the sharp end of the ideological war, involving the aggressive inculcation of Marxism-Leninism among her colleagues. It would never have been entrusted to a lukewarm Communist. Theatre tickets, anyone?
