Here's Germany's anti-Trump Trump
Two books on the east-west divisions he faces
The Big Story:
The curtain has gone up on a hinge moment in history for Germany. The election thrust a mix of actors and issues to the fore and put the spotlight on east-west political faultlines from the Cold War era.
The leading man on the stage of Europe’s biggest economy is incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz.1 He has hit back hard at the Trump administration’s savage criticism of Europe. Merz looks set to assume the role of Germany and Europe’s anti-Trump Trump.
Like Trump:
Merz professes passionate admiration for America and for Ronald Reagan, as well as profound scepticism of government intervention. He often quotes Reagan: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help’.”
He is a free marketeer who has worked in the private sector and prizes American-style red-blooded capitalism.
Merz is hailed by supporters as a “back to the roots” leader and is prone to populist bluster, particularly on migration.
He is a multi-millionaire, an older white guy who plays golf and has his own private plane (which, unlike Trump, he flies himself).
Merz has a reputation for being an impulsive, thin-skinned risk-taker who speaks bluntly.
Unlike Trump:
Merz is thin, a born-and-bred Catholic and is still married to his first and only wife.
He has a decided affinity with the law. Merz trained as a lawyer, his father was a judge and so is his wife.
This Week, Those Books:
A former citizen of East Germany argues for more respect for the ex-communist part.
A novel that tries to bridge the gap between East and West Germany.
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Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990
By: Katja Hoyer
Publisher: Allen Lane
Year: 2023
UK-based historian Katja Hoyer was five when the country of her birth, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or communist East Germany, ceased to exist as an entity.
But as Hoyer explains, it didn’t pass out of history.The country was around for 41 years, left a mark and if you look at it with “open eyes”, you can see “a world of colour…There was oppression and brutality, yes, and there was opportunity and belonging”.
This book reminds me of London academic Lea Ypi’s Free2 about reprising life in Communist Albania where she was born. Hoyer points to how the GDR created “the highest living standards in the communist world in the 1970s”, exported products as far as Britain and the United States and while “dependent on good will from Moscow (it) was never a passive Soviet satellite”.
Angela Merkel’s musings on East Germany open the book. The reunified country’s first and only female chancellor grew up there and Merkel says that as “a citizen from the East”, she too felt patronised and ignored like many of the 16 million others who lived in the former GDR.
Hoyer is on record that arrogance towards easterners (Ossies) lives on today. For instance, the fact that the former GDR votes heavily for the far right AfD, led by Alice Weidel,3 as in the recent election. This is sometimes dismissed as a sign that all East Germans are knee-jerk ‘fascists’.4
Choice quote:
East Germans lived and shaped a distinctly German experiment that spanned much of the second half of the twentieth century. Its political, economic, social and cultural idiosyncrasies deserve a history that treats it as more than a walled ‘Stasiland’ and gives it its proper place in German history.
The Granddaughter: A Novel
By: Bernhard Schlink (translated by Charlotte Collins)
Publisher: Hachette
Year: 2025
For Bernhard Schlink the past is never past. His new novel tackles the continuing divisions of reunified Germany. In particular, the former East Germany’s sympathy for the far right.
The story opens with elderly Berlin bookseller Kaspar arriving home to find his wife Birgit drowned in the bathtub. Birgit, who was born and brought up in East Germany, was an aspirational writer and alcoholic. Kaspar finds her autobiography and discovers that his wife had a baby daughter she abandoned at birth but always hoped to meet.
Deciding to find the child on Birgit’s behalf, Kaspar meets Svenja, who lives in the east with her neo-Nazi husband and 14-year-old daughter Sigrun. All around the former GDR there is talk of moving on from “guilt” for the past. Kaspar starts to play host to Sigrun every few months in Berlin – her parents need financial inducement to allow this – and inter-generational tensions over politics and patriotism ensue.
Choice quote:
If a thing was serious, she took it seriously. Only later, after the Wall came down, when he became better acquainted with booksellers from East Berlin and Brandenburg, did he understand that in this Birgit was a child of East Germany, of the GDR, of the proletarian world that, with Prussian socialist fervor, yearned to be bourgeois and took culture and politics seriously, as the bourgeoisie had once done and had forgotten how to do.
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Ed Turner. Who is Friedrich Merz, the man now most likely to lead Germany? Eight things to know. The Conversation, February 24, 2025. https://theconversation.com/who-is-friedrich-merz-the-man-now-most-likely-to-lead-germany-eight-things-to-know-247643
Alice Weidel’s far right, pro-Russia AfD is especially popular in ex-communist East Germany. She has falsely described Hitler as a communist. Fact check: AfD head called Hitler 'communist.' He was not. DW, January 11, 2025. https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-afd-head-called-hitler-communist-he-was-not/a-71274756
In April 2023, Mathias Döpfner, head of one of Europe’s largest media groups, Axel Springer, had to apologise for leaked messages in which he wrote “The East Germans are either communists or fascists. They don't do anything in between. Disgusting." https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/gesellschaft/id_100159538/doepfner-enthuellungen-ostbeauftragter-fordert-rauswurf-von-springer-chef.html