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ANGELA MERKEL

Behind Berlin Wall Merkel dreamt of US road trip ‘listening to Springsteen’

If the Berlin Wall hadn't come down, German Chancellor Angela Merkel would have become a pensioner five years back and embarked on her dream US road trip listening to Bruce Springsteen.

Published: 5 November 2019 17:34 CET
Behind Berlin Wall Merkel dreamt of US road trip 'listening to Springsteen'
A smiling Merkel earlier this year. Photo: DPA

“In East Germany, women went into retirement at 60. So I would have already picked up my passport five years ago, and travelled to America,” the 65-year-old told Spiegel magazine in an interview Tuesday.

“Pensioners in the GDR (German Democratic Republic) were free to travel – those who are no longer needed as socialist workers can leave,” said Merkel, who was born in West Germany but grew up in the communist East.

Merkel said she would of course have also used her travel freedom to visit West Germany.

“But I would have wanted my first trip to be to America. Because of the size, the diversity, the culture.

“To see the Rocky Mountains, drive around in a car and listen to Bruce Springsteen – that was my dream,” Merkel said.

READ ALSO: Merkel at 65: 10 pictures that tell the story of the 'eternal chancellor'

Bruce Springsteen AKA The Boss at a concert in New York on Monday. Photo: DPA

The US rockstar was hugely popular in East Germany and even played a rare gig there in 1988 as communist leaders sought to placate the GDR's increasingly restless young people.

Asked if she would have driven an American cruiser on her trip, Merkel said she prefers smaller cars.

“But it should be something better than a Trabant,” the chancellor quipped, referring to the dinky and famously unreliable “Trabi” car made in East Germany.

READ ALSO: How Berlin is marking 30th anniversary of the fall of the Wall

Speaking at an event at a Volkswagen factory in the eastern town of Zwickau on Monday, Merkel recalled that she had been in line to get a Trabant but it never got delivered in time before the communist regime came crashing down.

Merkel's musings come as the country is holding a string of events this week to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989– a momentous occasion that led to the reunification of Germany a year later.

Merkel was born in the port city of Hamburg in 1954, but her father, a Lutheran clergyman, moved the family three months after her birth to a small-town parish in the communist East at a time when most people were headed the other way.

She grew up in Templin, Brandenburg and would eventually become the first East German to take the top job in reunified Germany.

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POLITICS

Sleep, seaside, potato soup: What will Merkel do next?

 After 16 years in charge of Europe's biggest economy, the first thing Angela Merkel wants to do when she retires from politics is take "a little nap". But what about after that?

Published: 5 December 2021 17:31 CET
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes and smiles at a 2018 press conference in Berlin.
Outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel briefly closes her eyes at a 2018 press conference in Berlin. Aside from plans to take "a little nap" after retiring this week, she hasn't given much away about what she might do next. Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP

The veteran chancellor has been tight-lipped about what she will do after handing over the reins to her successor Olaf Scholz on December 8th.

During her four terms in office, 67-year-old Merkel was often described as the most powerful woman in the world — but she hinted recently that she will not miss being in charge.

“I will understand very quickly that all this is now someone else’s responsibility. And I think I’m going to like that situation a lot,” she said during a trip to Washington this summer.

Famous for her stamina and her ability to remain fresh after all-night meetings, Merkel once said she can store sleep like a camel stores water.

But when asked about her retirement in Washington, she replied: “Maybe I’ll try to read something, then my eyes will start to close because I’m tired, so I’ll take a little nap, and then we’ll see where I show up.”

READ ALSO: ‘Eternal’ chancellor: Germany’s Merkel to hand over power
READ ALSO: The Merkel-Raute: How a hand gesture became a brand

‘See what happens’
First elected as an MP in 1990, just after German reunification, Merkel recently suggested she had never had time to stop and reflect on what else she might like to do.

“I have never had a normal working day and… I have naturally stopped asking myself what interests me most outside politics,” she told an audience during a joint interview with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

“As I have reached the age of 67, I don’t have an infinite amount of time left. This means that I want to think carefully about what I want to do in the next phase of my life,” she said.

“Do I want to write, do I want to speak, do I want to go hiking, do I want to stay at home, do I want to see the world? I’ve decided to just do nothing to begin with and see what happens.”

Merkel’s predecessors have not stayed quiet for long. Helmut Schmidt, who left the chancellery in 1982, became co-editor of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit and a popular commentator on political life.

Helmut Kohl set up his own consultancy firm and Gerhard Schroeder became a lobbyist, taking a controversial position as chairman of the board of the Russian oil giant Rosneft.

German writer David Safier has imagined a more eccentric future for Merkel, penning a crime novel called Miss Merkel: Mord in der Uckermark  that sees her tempted out of retirement to investigate a mysterious murder.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel forms her trademark hand gesture, the so-called “Merkel-Raute” (known in English as the Merkel rhombus, Merkel diamond or Triangle of Power). (Photo by Tobias SCHWARZ / AFP)
 

Planting vegetables
Merkel may wish to spend more time with her husband Joachim Sauer in Hohenwalde, near Templin in the former East Germany where she grew up, and where she has a holiday home that she retreats to when she’s weary.

Among the leisure activities she may undertake there is vegetable, and especially, potato planting, something that she once told Bunte magazine in an interview in 2013 that she enjoyed doing.

She is also known to be a fan of the volcanic island of D’Ischia, especially the remote seaside village of Sant’Angelo.

Merkel was captured on a smartphone video this week browsing the footwear in a Berlin sportswear store, leading to speculation that she may be planning something active.

Or the former scientist could embark on a speaking tour of the countless universities from Seoul to Tel Aviv that have awarded her honorary doctorates.

Merkel is set to receive a monthly pension of around 15,000 euros ($16,900) in her retirement, according to a calculation by the German Taxpayers’ Association.

But she has never been one for lavish spending, living in a fourth-floor apartment in Berlin and often doing her own grocery shopping.

In 2014, she even took Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to her favourite supermarket in Berlin after a bilateral meeting.

So perhaps she will simply spend some quiet nights in sipping her beloved white wine and whipping up the dish she once declared as her favourite, a “really good potato soup”.

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