Timothy Garton Ash writes a brilliant piece in today's Guardian where he argues that Angela Merkel needs all the help she can get.
He quotes from Thomas Mann who in 1953 in Hamburg appealed to students to strive for "not a German Europe but a European Germany".
Ash points out how this stirring pledge was endlessly repeated at the time of German unification.
He goes on to point out that toay we have a variation that few foresaw: a European Germany in a German Europe.
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1 comment:
I agree completely, Michael, Garton Ash's article is excellent - here's a link to it, for those who haven't managed to find it. Of course, he's a professional historian, whose area of specialisation is Germany.
Unfortunately, Merkel isn't the best woman for the job GA sees the German leadership as having to play. The woman has a huge problem with what George Bush snr. called "the vision thing," putting it bluntly, she doesn't have any. My used socks are more inspiring than Angela Merkel. But leadership is about more than cold figures and never making a stand until you are sure that the majority of the people agree with you. It often involves being ahead of the curve, including the popular opinion curve - leading people in terms of ideals, moral growth, vision.
Given Germany's history, Germans are rightly suspicious of political figures who are too charismatic. The whole idea of leadership is even linguistically difficult; modern Germans tend to speak of leiten rather than führen, because of the negative connotations Hitler caused with his use of the latter word. But Europe desperately needs visionary leadership right now - and Germany is probably the only country which can give it.
Another very annoying point about Merkel is her narrow-minded niggardliness of spirit. The end-game on Greece will eventually involve Europe (mostly Germany) writing off a large portion of Athen's debts, practically all the experts agree on this. But Merkel is still scared to explain this basic fact to the German people and to go on to tell them that, while this will cost German taxpayers in the short term, it's actually in their long-term interest. We could have had the Greek debt write-off (which will come) much cheaper two years ago, if only Merkel had been prepared to bite the bullet and take some short term unpopularity at home. The woman suffers from a profound lack of imagination and, therefore, ultimately of courage.
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