Angela Merkel has left Germans questioning how nicely they actually know the chancellor who has ruled them for 16 years, after choosing a track by the punk rocker Nina Hagen because the soundtrack for her navy leaving ceremony.
Merkel, whose Social Democrat successor, Olaf Scholz, is predicted to be sworn in as chancellor subsequent week, can be given a customary navy farewell within the courtyard outdoors the defence ministry on Thursday night.
The Großer Zapfenstreich ceremony can be extra low-key than normal due to coronavirus restrictions, with solely 200 company in attendance.
Like her predecessors, Merkel has been allowed to request three songs to be carried out by a marching band through the navy tattoo.
However whereas Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Kohl picked conventionally bombastic musical fare for the event – Frank Sinatra’s My Method and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ode to Pleasure, amongst others – a few of Merkel’s picks trace at unchartered hinterland.
Großer Gott, wir loben Dich (Holy God, we reward thy title) is a well-liked Christian hymn from the 18th century, a nod to her upbringing because the daughter of a Protestant pastor and the spiritual id of her social gathering, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Her second alternative, Hildegard Knef’s Für mich soll’s rote Rosen regnen (It ought to rain pink roses for me), a wistful track about teenage ambition and juvenile vanity, already suggests an ironic twinkle within the eye, nonetheless. “I used to be suppose to evolve, make do,” the lyrics go. “Oh, I can’t conform, I can’t make do, I all the time need to win too.”
However the choose that had commentators looking for subtext and hidden messages is Nina Hagen’s Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen (You forgot the color movie).
First recorded in 1974 in a standard schlager model, the track was a success within the East German pop charts earlier than Hagen emigrated to the opposite facet of the iron curtain, the place she immersed herself in London subcultures and have become West Germany’s pre-eminent punk determine of the Eighties.
However even to embrace her East German id is a transfer uncharacteristic of the Merkel her nation has identified throughout most of her 16 years in energy, when she not often introduced her jap upbringing to the fore.
The track, whose lyrics have been written by Kurt Demmler, is an offended lament that admonishes Hagen’s boyfriend Michael for having solely taken a black and white movie on their vacation to Hiddensee island. Because of this, she wails, “nobody will consider how stunning it was right here”.
Although not censored by the state, the track was understood by its admirers on the time as a covert criticism of the socialist republic and its gray and drab on a regular basis, the place color movies have been a uncommon commodity.
Some commentators have speculated whether or not the outgoing chancellor might have seen a extra trendy that means in Hagen’s track: a howl of frustration with males neglecting to do their job correctly is also designed as a parting shot from Merkel to her male colleagues.