Angela Merkel: A Contested Legacy

Image credit: Georgia Ryan

Earlier this week, a peculiar statue of Angela Merkel straddling a horse was erected in the small Bavarian town of Entsdorf. Bereft of the magisterial opulence one has come to expect from equestrian portrayals of history’s eminent leaders – think Marcus Aurelius, Philip IV of Spain, Napoleon – the life-sized Merkel appears modestly in her trouser suit, with neither saddle nor bridle, in a rigid posture of sober severity, her hands falling neatly in front of her in that idiosyncratic diamond shape we have all come to know so well. The horse doesn’t even stand upon a plinth. 

The statue is, quite frankly, ridiculous, and was widely derided online: does it represent an accolade which eulogises Merkel, soon to be replaced after sixteen years at Germany’s helm? Or rather, was the statue’s ostensible lack of grandeur a derisory manifestation of mockery towards her tenure? When Wilhelm Koch, the artist behind the statue, was asked this very question by Der Spiegel, whether the statue posited ‘Würdigung’ (appreciation) or ‘Ironie’, he enigmatically replied, “both resonate”.

So how should we remember Angela Merkel? Admittedly, many may see the statue a fitting statuesque panegyric. After all, it is a largely unseen phenomena to see a female equestrian statue. As such, one may see the statue as an appropriate retort to a historical canon which exclusively inaugurates ‘great’ male leaders upon their noble steeds. It is a feminist abode to a female leader who stood firm before the machoistic bravado of Putin and Trump, commemorating the fact that, for much of the last decade, the most powerful leader in Europe has been a woman. This cannot be understated.    

On the other hand, equestrian statues don’t exactly enjoy very good public relations these days. Fundamentally, equine monuments almost exclusively celebrate the white male conqueror/coloniser. In the wake of the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, a statue of the Confederate general Robert E. Lee upon a horse was removed. Only last week, an equestrian statue of ex-US President Andrew Jackson was defaced on Indigenous Peoples’ Day in America. Consequently, Merkel’s appearance upon a horse equates her with a long list of antiquarian male leaders and conquerors – many of whose statues and actions have been rightly condemned - thus implicitly indicating the artist’s true intentions: ire towards an outdated political behemoth.  

Indeed, there will undoubtedly be those who will be happy to see the back of Merkel, and there will also be those, particularly within the European Union, who will lament the loss of such a stabilising bulwark within the union’s increasingly precarious edifice. During the darkest days of Trump’s presidency, Merkel often appeared to be the only remaining adult on the world stage: with the United Kingdom mired in a hard-Tory Brexit, India sliding into a nationalistic autocracy, North Korea led by a volatile dictator, and Russia and China pursuing increasingly truculent foreign policies, the German chancellor was perceived as a beacon of hope for many.

Melania, Donald Trump and Angela Merkel (Photo: The Kremlin, Moscow, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

It cannot be denied that Merkel is a decent and humane leader: pragmatic, cautious, and indelibly driven towards consensus amidst the convoluted panoply of Germany’s proportionally represented party system. History will no doubt ruminate upon the genesis of this ‘unique’ style of governance: Merkel entered the Christian Democratic Union Party (profoundly shaped by Konrad Adenauer’s Rhenish Catholicism) not only as a woman, but also as a Protestant, and a citizen of the GDR. Some will argue that her role as an outsider within the party encouraged a ruthless streak beneath a reticent façade; others will postulate that Merkel’s education as a physicist taught her to view politics through the perceptive lens of empiricism, producing policy poised upon fact rather than heady political ideals.

However, beneath the conjecture lies something more banal. Fundamentally, Merkel’s tenure can be characterised by an innate lack of political consistency, a disparity between Merkel’s admirable public image and the obfuscating realities of Realpolitik. We will all remember Merkel’s famous words, “wir schaffen das”, when she opened the borders of Germany to let in one million Syrian refugees. A truly remarkable thing, particularly when viewed (as it should be) in light of Germany’s twentieth century. Formally, Germany’s borders remained open, and yet behind closed doors, Merkel was negotiating underhand deals with Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, essentially closing Turkey’s borders so Germany didn’t have to. None could make it without safe passage through Turkey. Indeed, antithetical to what the international media writes, hypocrisy has characterised much of Germany’s foreign policy. Under Merkel, China has been Germany’s largest trading partner; Germany has ploughed ahead with the contentious Nord Stream gas pipeline, hugely beneficial to Putin; and Merkel tolerated the presence of Hungary’s Viktor Orbàn in the European People’s party, the supernational association of European centre-right parties, whilst he systematically dismantled Hungarian democracy. 

Domestically, German politics have stagnated under Merkel’s nimbus of competence and supposed consistency. Germany may have balanced budgets, but Merkel has failed to undo Schröder’s pernicious, neoliberal Agenda 2010 (billed as reforms which would reduce unemployment, they forced millions of marginalised people into poorly paid, precarious, low-quality working conditions), creating incrementally rising disparities between classes and, more importantly, between the East and the West. Her adherence to consensus has created a cumbersome polity through which radical policies rarely pass: once hailed as the ‘climate chancellor’, she has nevertheless been slow to act on the climate crisis, whilst Germany’s degenerating response to the pandemic has illuminated the chaos wrought by tinkering micropolitics. By appropriating the policies of other parties and constantly seeking compromise, Merkel leaves behind a neutered political landscape bereft of agency, along with a disillusioned population, increasingly compelled towards political extremities. 

No, Merkel has not been perfect. Nevertheless, even her harshest critics will concede her fundamental decency. Indeed, Merkel enjoys widespread popularity for this very reason: far from the morally vacuous, machismo men who have come to characterise the last decade of politics, Merkel is somewhat of an anomaly. Admittedly, this is a simultaneous indication of how very little we expect of our leaders today. And yet, to some extent, the equestrian statue is an eminently fitting monument by which we should remember Merkel: modest, down-to-earth (literally), prosaic, all qualities which seem so wanting in politics these days. And for this we should reflect upon Merkel with admiration. For one can only imagine what an equestrian statue of Donald Trump might have looked like… at least Merkel’s is somewhat inconspicuous, inoffensive, and self-effacing.