Annalena Baerbock has seen constant ups and downs. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” she says. That also applies to her start as Foreign Minister. However, she quickly realized: “In the end, everyone only cooks with water.”
Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock looked back on the past year in an interview with “Stern”. The 41-year-old spoke, among other things, about the biggest “aha moment” in the first few weeks of her tenure. “I was lucky that there was a G7 meeting in my first week. I met many important foreign ministers in one fell swoop and learned two things straight away: how important human relationships are in international politics. And that in the end everyone only cooks with water.”
Baerbock also said she really enjoys her job. She feels that despite the brutality of the war and the magnitude of the challenge. Your time in the polling hole before the 2021 federal elections “felt an eternity ago,” said Baerbock to the “Stern”. When she thinks back to that time, she tries to use old German proverbs: “Everything has its good side. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
According to Baerbock, the past twelve months have passed “like in fast motion”. First she was appointed chancellor candidate. Then the Greens fell and with them they too in the polls. Baerbock became the target of harsh criticism. And now her popularity ratings as Secretary of State are skyrocketing again. Baerbock: “The ups and downs would easily have been enough for ten years.”
And she also knows that a high can be followed by a low. “I wasn’t the only one who had to experience that. That’s how it was the whole world.” Two and a half years ago, people thought they were on the right track. “Then Corona knocks everything down,” said Baerbock to the “Stern”. “And just as we were thinking, now we’re slowly getting over the highest mountain, Russia attacks the European peace order.”
One should never be too sure, says Baerbock.
