Dear Jaga,
It is a not so good moment that she steps down, because there is not a present, dominant and charismatic replacement for her. But I am sure that the Realpolitiker, the pragmatic, realistic, responsible, tactical and strategic thinking CDU leadership and top Public servants will negotiate, discuss and debate with Merkel who would be able to follow her up. Today it is not easy to find a person with the power, wisdom, strength, diplomacy and experience of Angela Merkel.
Not only Germany needs a strong German leader, but also Europe and the world needs a strong, experience, responsible, pragmatic and diplomatic German leader, who can make difficult decisions, who can be tough and who can also be a mediator, a Referee, a moral leader and fierce if necessary.
But fact is that leaders always are there only for a certain time in democracies. Angela Merkel is no Vladimir Putin, nor a Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. She did great things for Germany and Europe and she did some less smart things. Not showing restraint in her conduct or position towards the mass immigration situation created loss of trust and losses for her Christian Democratic CDU party. In Germany dissident Conservative Christian democrats of the rightwing wing of Angela Merkels CDU party founded the rightwing Populist Alternative for Germany a few years ago. You could place that Alternative for Germany somewhere inbetween the civil protest movement against Islamization and immigration Pegida in Dreseden and the far right NPD (National Democratische Partei Deutschlands) and DVU (Deutsche VolksUnion) on one side and the ultra-conservative rightwing of the Bavarian Christian democratic CSU party, a partner of Merkel's CDU party in the large CDU-CSU Union fraction in the German parliament, the Bundestag.
Merkel alienated the rightwing wing of her own CDU party and the far more conservative Bavarian CSU party from her own position 'Wir schaffen es' (We will manage it), with her welcoming of mass immigration to Germany in 2015 and after that. Part of the German population supported her from a leftwing socialist (Die Linke), center left Social democratic (her coalition partner the German Labour party SPD) and Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen), the centrist to center right German liberals of the FDP and the moderate, progressive, social christian democratic wing of the CDU (often with a Lutheran, Protestant social christan ethical stance of you have to help the poor and prosecuted from a Gospel point of view -Merkel herself is the daughter of an East-German minister and a Former socialist youth movement FDJ member. Karl pointed at her East-German mentality and compassion due to that fact).
But the rightwing populist East-Germans, and West-Germans don't share her altruism, Protestant christian social stance and dislike, hate and oppose their tolerant, lenient (in their point of view), and capitulating (surrendering) stance (again in the point of view of Merkels opponents). Her opponents believe that the German Abendland (the good old Germany) is in danger due to Non-Western, Non-European mass immigration. They talk about 'Islamisierung"(Islamization), Entfremdung (alienation) and überfremdung of the German native European population. These national conservative people, rightwing populists, ultra-conservatvive rightwing wing of the CDU and CSU people really dislike Angela Merkels policies. That's why Merkels party lost so much and people voted for the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland).
In the same time you saw significant changes and movements on the left. The Social Democratic Labour party of Germany, the SPD lost votes to the Greens (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and probably also to the the Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland). Probably also some votes of the lefwing Die Linke party went to the Greens? In the same time on the left also a lefwing populist and leftwing nationalist movement appeared on the stage. The charismatic East-German left-wing atheist and marxist politician, economist, author, publicist and former member of the Free German Youth (FDJ) Sahra Wagenknecht (born 16 July 1969) launched a movement to counter AfD, a new “national social” formation, the New 'Aufstehen' movement. Sahra Wagenknecht got's support from the former influential Saarland prime minister and Social Democrat Oscar Lafontaine.
On 28 May 2016 an activist from the anti-fascist group Torten für Menschenfeinde ("Cakes for Enemies of Humanity") pushed a chocolate cake in Wagenknecht's face at a Left Party meeting in Magdeburg in response to Wagenknecht's calls for limits on the number of refugees.
According to Wagenknecht, the New 'Aufstehen' movement is meant to rally left-wing voters and pressure politicians to create a majority that would result in a left-wing government. It also aims to win over the "protest voters" who currently support populist parties such as the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD).
A poll ordered by the Focus magazine showed that more than a third of German voters "could see themselves" voting for Aufstehen if the movement transformed into a political party. The response was overwhelmingly positive among the Left voters, where 87 percent were open to supporting her initiative at the polls.
So both from the left and the right the traditional democratic centrist parties face opposition from leftwing populist and rightwing populist movements. If people understand the developments in 19th century Germany, the Revolutions of 1848 (the most widespread revolutionary wave in European history), Prussian nationalism (Prussian nationalist sentiment emphasizing Protestant triumphalism. I think of wars the Prussians were engaged in in 1864, 1866, and in 1870 and the Prussian led 1871 unification of Germany into the German Empire in which the German Emperor was also the King of Prussia), leftwing nationalism (Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels evaluated progressive nationalism as involving the destruction of feudalism, and believed that it was a beneficial step), The Communist German socialist national democratic state patriotism of the DDR (German Democratic Republic, GDR)), the conservative revolution of the early 20th century. The German conservative revolutionary movement (German: Konservative Revolution, lit. 'Conservative Revolution') was a German national conservative movement, prominent in the years following World War I. The German conservative revolutionary school of thought advocated a nationalism that was specifically German, or Prussian in particular. Like other right-wing movements in the same period, they sought to put a stop to the rising tide of liberalism and communism.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_revolutionary_movementThe predecessors of the present day Alternative für Deutschland party founded the political group Electoral Alternative 2013 (German: Wahlalternative 2013) in Bad Nauheim in September 2012. Alexander Gauland, Bernd Lucke, and journalist Konrad Adam, opposed the German federal policies concerning the eurozone crisis. Their manifesto was endorsed by several economists, journalists, and business leaders, and stated that the eurozone had proven to be "unsuitable" as a currency area and that southern European states were "sinking into poverty under the competitive pressure of the euro".
According to wikipedia the party has been described as a German nationalist, right-wing populist, and Eurosceptic party. Since about 2015, the AfD has been increasingly open to working with far-right extremist groups such as Pegida. Parts of the AfD have racist, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and xenophobic tendencies linked to far-right movements such as neo-Nazism and identitarianism. In the 2017 German federal elections the AfD won 12.6% of the vote and received 94 seats; this was the first time it had won seats in the Bundestag. It was also the first time since the Second World war that a political party with clear national-socialist parliamentarians (Afd Bundestag members who are former NPD members and party activists), Peoples nationalists, extreme rightwing politicians, and people with a reactionary, national conservative, Deutsch nationale orientierung, entered the Bundestag (German parliament) in such a large group.
German nationalismThe party was founded on opposition to Germany's financial support of other Eurozone states and the third main point of its initial platform called for Germany to cede no further elements of its sovereignty to the EU without approval via a referendum. Over time, a focus on German nationalism, on reclaiming Germany's sovereignty and national pride, especially in repudiation to Germany's culture of shame with regard to its Nazi past, became more central in Alternative für Deutschland's ideology and a central plank in its populist appeals. For example,
Petry, who led the moderate wing of the party, said that Germany should reclaim the German word "
völkisch" from its
Nazi connotations, while
Höcke, who is an example of the more right-wing views, regularly speaks of the "
Fatherland" and "
Volk." In January 2017,
Höcke drew heavy criticism for a speech in which he stated, in reference to
the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, "
Germans are the only people in the world who plant a monument of shame in the heart of the capital," and criticized the "
laughable policy of coming to terms with the past."
Höcke continued that Germany should make a "
180 degree" turn with regard to its sense of
national pride.
The party also describes
German national identity as under threat both from European integration and from the presence and accommodation of immigrants and refugees within Germany; its anti-immigration message is often articulated in this way, especially with regard to
Islam.
Sources: Wikpedia, Encyclopedia Britannica, the Guardian, The Deutsche Welle (DW) and the Financial Times.Cheers,
Pieter