Freedom
Memoirs 1954–2021
Angela Merkel
With
Having read it
★★★☆☆
An interesting first part to Angela’s formative years in and around family life and living in the GDR of the mid-1950s into the late 1960s (she started moving around after that for her science and then political work).
However, it didn’t seem to have – despite it presenting many facts and specific moments with certain characters – a reader-friendly narrative that had some pace and even some intrigue to help make it a page-turner (skipped and skimmed a few parts to just get the gist and some insight at times); appreciate it’s a memoir, but still, it plods along . . . although her good works just about shine through the prose.
A good passage
[...] Of course, every profession, politics included, has its own specialist language. That is inescapable, and there is no point in complaining about it. Nonetheless, today I am sometimes aware that it is hard for me to listen to some politicians in interviews or other official statements because they speak a lot but say little. Once again: I often did exactly the same. But now that I have left active politics and have, while writing this book, reviewed many situations and formulations – I would like to encourage young politicians in particular to be less afraid of giving concrete answers to concrete questions; if they do so, the message they want to convey will be given room to come through.
This is all the more important because we live in times when, because of digital developments as well as so-called social media, truths can be called lies and lies truths to a hitherto unknown degree, and this is used even in democracies by people in leading positions. But true freedom is not directed solely toward one’s own advantage, it has inhibitions and scruples. True freedom is not only freedom from something – from dictatorship and injustice but shows itself in responsibility for something: for one’s neighbour, for the community, for our common good.
Freedom needs democratic conditions – without democracy there is no freedom, no constitutional state, no guarantee of human rights. If we want to live in freedom, we must defend our democracy within and without against those who threaten it. We can do that if we work together. If we commit ourselves together. Everyone for themselves, and all of us in it together. Because freedom cannot only exist for the individual, freedom must apply to everyone.