Former Chancellor Angela Merkel admits to having been exhausted after 16 years as Chancellor. “The office always came first,” she says in a recent interview. Even after the death of her mother, she hardly had time to mourn.
After more than 30 years of politics, former Chancellor Angela Merkel feels an unusual feeling of freedom. “Sometimes it’s still unusual that I no longer have deadline pressure,” said Merkel in an interview with the editorial network Germany (RND). Now she is in a new phase of life: “Now I’m free.” That’s a nice feeling. “I treat myself to that because I think I’ve done it long enough.” After 16 years as chancellor, she was exhausted. “I was pretty exhausted,” said Merkel. But she was not a “half-dead wreck”. As early as 1998, she had declared that she never wanted to end like this.
The reward as chancellor is the opportunity to make the final decision yourself. “The price is a high level of privacy and 24/7 availability. Always, at any time of the day or night, whether Christmas or New Year. The office always came first.” She was not able to decide freely about her time. “It’s a great relief that it’s over after so many years.”
There was also little time to mourn her mother, who died a few days before an EU summit in April 2019. “That is part of the round-the-clock availability. When there is an EU Council, there is an EU Council. When it’s night session, it’s night session. If I’m not lying in bed with a fever of 40, I’ll just go to the EU Council.” That was her understanding of office.
