The actor Ulrich Matthes has been friends with ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel for a long time. In an interview, he now explains why Merkel has so far largely withdrawn from the public eye – and why that won’t really change.
What does Angela Merkel actually do? Since leaving office, the ex-Chancellor has only briefly commented on the current situation via a statement via a spokesman. In an interview with “Stern”, actor Ulrich Matthes now explains why Merkel has so far largely withdrawn from the public eye.
“I suspect that she doesn’t want to be present as a kind of secondary chancellor.” In terms of her type, she doesn’t aspire “to the role of the elder stateswoman.”
However, Merkel does not leave the matter without emotion: “The situation burdens her far more than it burdens us all anyway. I don’t think any other chancellor would have acted differently towards Russia in the past 20 years,” Matthes said.
The actor believes that Merkel does not want to appear on talk shows as ex-Chancellor like Helmut Schmidt. “There’s going to be more of a different kind of presence from her over the next few years and a different way of underplaying that role.”
In the interview, Matthes also admits that he can’t imagine ever playing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Matthes, 63, who can currently be seen on Netflix as Hitler in the film “Munich” by Christian Schwochow, says in “Stern”: “Now it’s good with the mass murderers”. After the end of filming on “Munich” he decided not to play any more Nazi greats – “and I’m sticking to it.” Putin, says Matthes, “would just be an empathetic, evil person stuck in his ideology.”
