“Angela Merkel – her path, her secrets, her future”: RTL is dedicating a four-hour themed evening to the Chancellor’s German-German career in celebration of the upcoming departure.
In the spring, Ufa, the oldest and still one of the largest German production companies, founded a subsidiary that is to concentrate exclusively on the documentary sector. The first result is already ready: “Angela Merkel – Ms. Federal Chancellor”.
The series by the former Spiegel editor-in-chief Stefan Aust and his co-author Katrin Klocke, program director at Spiegel TV Wissen, is a novelty in German television history. Angela Merkel’s life is documented in detail in five episodes of fifty minutes each: birth in Hamburg in 1954, childhood and youth in the GDR, her role in the growing together of the two German states, her rapid rise in the CDU; and finally the end of the Merkel era.
Angela Merkel on RTL: A four hour long documentary
In contrast to other projects of this kind, in which contemporary witnesses, companions and historians dissect, analyze and comment on events and decisions, the duo of authors has limited itself exclusively to archive material. The commentary creates contexts and links, but apart from that, the series is basically a four-hour long documentary divided into five chapters.
The individual episodes focus on the different stages of life (“A child of the GDR”, “The way to power”, “At the top of power”). The result is particularly exciting because Aust and Klocke also tell the German-German history of the past seventy years: from the workers ‘and peasants’ uprising in 1953 to the liquidation of the GDR. And of course the history of the reunified country, whose fortunes Merkel has shaped like no one else since 1990: first as a minister, then as chairwoman of the CDU, and finally as Federal Chancellor for 16 years.
| Angela Dorothea Merkel | |
| Born | July 17, 1954 Hamburg |
| Office | Federal Chancellor since 2005 |
| Political party | CDU |
| Spouse | Joachim Sauer (married since 1998), Ulrich Merkel (married 1977–1982) |
RTL says goodbye to Angela Merkel in political retirement
Excerpts from the documentation characterize the four-hour themed evening with which RTL says goodbye to Merkel in her alleged political retirement. Peter Kloeppel and Inka Bause lead the show. Nazan Eckes holds talks with people who had special encounters with the Chancellor, including Barack Obama and the former President of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, as well as mountaineer Reinhold Messner.
However, it may be more worthwhile to take a look at the entire series that can be accessed in the paid area of the RTL streaming platform TVNow. The clichéd prelude (“From Kohl’s girl to the most powerful woman in the world”) initially suggests a rather superficial chronicle, but the episodes turn out to be extraordinarily complex, especially since Klocke and Aust, whose best works include the Book “Der Baader-Meinhof-Complex” (1985) brought a multitude of amazing finds to light.
Angela Merkel proves to be pleasantly accessible
Especially in the older gems, such as an episode of the ZDF series “Klassentreffen” (1994), Merkel proves to be pleasantly accessible. Almost even more interesting is a recording that was made during her time as press spokeswoman for the short-lived GDR party, Democratic Awakening, before an actual interview. This part of her biography is not only interesting because of the turning point. Thanks to the consolidation, it is indeed extremely exciting to follow her ascent within the CDU, but many pictures are still quite present. This is true anyway for the crises of the past ten years.
Klocke and Aust, who already worked with Ufa on the documentary “Hannelore Kohl – the first woman”, received recognition at the start of their series, but also had to take criticism. This was based on their origins (both are West German), but mainly related to the seemingly unimaginative orientation towards the chronology of Merkel’s biography.
More serious, however, was the accusation that the documentation gave the pastor’s daughter a closeness to the GDR system that she did not have. This runs through the entire series up to the award of the freedom medal in the USA in 2011, which was not granted to her, but to the former GDR civil rights activists. With their often inadequate tone of voice and a not very Merkel-friendly choice of words (“Chancellor actress”), it was said on Deutschlandfunk, for example, that the documentation was welcome fodder for right-wing populists.
“Angela Merkel – her way, her secrets, her future”
Thursday, July 15, 2021, RTL, from 8.45 p.m.
Angela Merkel comes across as a pretty smart woman and a very personable person
In the “Tagesspiegel” it was stated that “it doesn’t take too much imagination to assume that the filmmaker Angela Merkel does not consider the very best top political cast in Germany’s recent history.” That may be true, but Merkel comes across as pretty in the extremely multi-faceted collage smart woman and a very personable person.
On the other hand, criticism of Merkel’s often hesitant style is just as appropriate as the statement that, despite all the supposed social democratization of the CDU, her policy was always business-friendly. It is precisely in the contradiction to which the comments by Aust and Klocke are irritating that there is also an attraction of the series. As a document of German-German history, it is worth seeing anyway. It also shows how captivating politics can be. (Tilmann P. Gangloff)
