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ANGELA MERKEL

German military bids Merkel farewell after 16 ‘eventful’ years

With a hit by the "godmother of punk" Nina Hagen, Germany's military saluted a visibly moved Angela Merkel during a ceremonial farewell Thursday, just a week before she is due to bow out of politics after 16 years in office.

Published: 3 December 2021 09:49 CET
Angela Merkel at the Großer Zapfenstreich
Angela Merkel gives a speech the Großer Zapfenstreich. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/AFP POOL | Odd Andersen

Soldiers in full regalia and carrying flaming torches took part in the carefully choreographed evening event, accompanied by a marching band performing traditional military music and Merkel’s own playlist.

The ceremonial send-off came just days before Germany’s parliament is due to officially elect Social Democrat Olaf Scholz as Merkel’s replacement, putting the centre-left politician in charge after 16 years of conservative-led rule.

At the ceremony, Merkel said her four terms were “eventful and often very challenging years.

“They have challenged me politically and humanly and at the same time, they were also fulfilling.”

Alluding to the challenge of countering fake news as Germany fights the relentless coronavirus pandemic, she underlined the “great significance of trust in politics, science and societal discourse — and also how fragile all that is”.

Stressing that democracies live on “solidarity and trust — also from trust in facts”, she said that where scientific facts were being denied and where conspiracy theories abound, they must be energetically countered.

‘Highlight of my youth’

Known for her regular attendance at Bayreuth opera festival, dedicated to the composer Richard Wagner, Merkel had surprised military band leaders and political commentators alike with her unusual playlist for the military pomp.

While Helmut Kohl opted for Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” and Gerhard Schroeder plumped for Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” when it was their turn to bow out, Merkel chose East German pop song “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen” (You forgot the colour film) by Nina Hagen.

Asked at a press conference Thursday about the pick, Merkel said it harked back to her younger days in communist East Germany.

“The song was a highlight of my youth… The song also came from East Germany and, coincidentally, it is still played in a region that used to be my constituency. So everything fits today,” the 67-year-old said.

READ ALSO: ‘One of us’: Merkel’s German hometown a refuge from wild world

Soldiers at the Zepfenstreich
Soldiers salute outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel with torches at the Großer Zapfenstreich ceremony. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/AFP POOL | Odd Andersen

Merkel was born in the port city of Hamburg, but her father, a Lutheran clergyman and a schoolteacher, moved the family to a small-town parish in the communist East at a time when tens of thousands were headed the other way.

Hagen, who began her career in the East, emigrated to West Germany and became a leading figure in the punk scene of the 1980s.

In the song, Hagen complains that because her boyfriend forgot to bring colour film for the camera on their holiday, “no one would believe how beautiful it was here”.

An orchestral arrangement of the song, first released in 1974, was specially written by a music corps clarinetist for the ceremony.

‘Unexpectedly sentimental’

While few were surprised by Merkel’s pick of the hymn “Grosser Gott, wir loben dich” (Holy God, we praise thy name), commentators also raised their eyebrows over the third song, touching sixties ballad “Für mich soll’s rote Rosen regen” (It should rain red roses for me) by Hildegard Knef.

The tear-jerker is “unexpectedly sentimental for a woman with the sensible, pragmatic style of government,” noted Spiegel.

Its lyrics may hint at Merkel’s future, said Spiegel, citing the stanza: “Let it rain red roses for me, let me encounter new wonders, let me unfold anew from the old.”

Großer Zapfenstreich

Angela Merkel watches the Großer Zapfenstreich held in honour of her 16 years as Chancellor on December 2nd, 2021. Photo: picture alliance/dpa/AFP POOL | Odd Andersen

The veteran leader, who once said her dream back behind the Iron Curtain had been “to see the Rocky Mountains, drive around in a car and listen to Bruce Springsteen,” has been tight-lipped about what she’ll do next.Her choices reflected Merkel’s ability to “send messages better with gestures than with words”, the German Süddeutsche daily wrote.

But she has said she pictures herself reading and maybe taking “a little nap”.

The military ceremony, known as a “grosser Zapfenstreich”, has its origins in the 16th century and is the highest tribute paid by the German army.

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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