Do Germans Have Short Memories? Angela Merkel Being Forced Out After Unifying Germany Because of Migrants?

 'Take it or leave it Vladimyr'

I would like to give you this posting from  Katrin Bennhold on The New York Times.  

[Editorial from the blog Publisher]Something so sad is happening in Germany because people are impatient and have short memories not willing to give Merkel anymore time. They gave her time when she was unifying the east to the west and really most experts said at the time that only she could have done such a feat to have all those Germans cultivated by the communism of Stalin in which left them with nothing, still they came and got integrated to the advance Western Germany. The only thing these two classes of Germans had in common was the language and nothing else.  She took them in when everyone was saying it will ruin the economy, it will bring the country down. This can not be done, these are not german anymore. Well, Germany is been the biggest economic force in Europe if not the world since. Germans have been living very well and is not because they are working more or harder but because of their ingenuity. But now there is no more time for Merkel because the migrants are going to being the country down. For Germany to get rid of this Iron Lady who's been the face of economic strengh for 13 years it would be another big mistake by the German population. Adam🦊

CHEMNITZ, Germany — Two weeks after announcing that she would not seek another term, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was standing in an old locomotive factory in the eastern city of Chemnitz, the scene of far-right protests this year.

Outside, 2,500 protesters shouted: “Merkel must go!” Inside, 120 people — more polite but scarcely less hostile — had come to challenge the chancellor on her legacy, which on this November afternoon was mostly reduced to one thing: her 2015 decision to welcome more than a million migrants into Germany.

“You said we would manage,” one man said, quoting Ms. Merkel’s now famous mantra back at her. “But we’re not managing.”

As Ms. Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Party gathers this week to choose her successor as party leader — and the likely future chancellor of Germany — the values she embodied through 13 years in power are in danger. Some now ask whether her leadership, in particular on migration and economic austerity, helped plant the seeds of the forces now tearing Europe apart.

Ms. Merkel has pledged to finish out her term, which ends in 2021. But even if she defies the political obituary writers, the time in between is likely to be less than a victory lap for a chancellor who has been the face of stability in Germany and Europe, for better or worse.

“I know my face is polarizing,” Ms. Merkel conceded in Chemnitz. That is true in Athens, Budapest and Rome as well.

Ms. Merkel has been both chancellor of Germany and the leader of Europe. She steered her country and the continent through successive crises as she helped Germany become Europe’s leading power for the first time since two world wars.

No one has shaped the Europe of today more than this vicar’s daughter from the former Communist East who was celebrated as the guardian of the liberal Western order.

Ms. Merkel allowed Germans to be proud again, but on her watch the old demons of nationalism stirred back to life, too. The European Union she fought so hard to preserve is assailed by populist leaders.

                                                     

A protest against Ms. Merkel last month in Chemnitz, a town that has become a symbol of a Germany wrestling with its identity.CreditFilip Singer/EPA, via Shutterstock

Those contradictions rest at the core of the Merkel legacy. As German chancellor, Ms. Merkel oversaw a golden decade for Europe’s largest economy, which expanded by more than a fifth, pushing unemployment to the lowest levels since the early 1980s.

As the United States was distracted by multiple wars, Britain gambled its future on a referendum to leave the European Union and France failed to reform itself, Ms. Merkel’s Germany was mostly a haven of stability.

But her decision to embrace more than a million asylum seekers unsettled that cozy status quo. Outside Germany, the austerity she and her longtime finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble imposed on debtor countries like Italy, Spain, Portugal and, especially, Greece sowed misery and resentment that fester to this day.

Some, like the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, compare Ms. Merkel’s austerity politics to the Treaty of Versailles, which imposed punitive economic measures on Germany after World War I, humiliated the country and fanned the flames of populism.

“This is now what is feeding the political beasts,” Mr. Varoufakis said.

Many of her postwar predecessors had strongly defined legacies. Konrad Adenauer anchored Germany in the West. Willy Brandtreached across the Iron Curtain. Helmut Kohl, her onetime mentor, became synonymous with German unity. Gerhard Schröder paved the way for Germany’s economic success.

Ms. Merkel’s legacy is more fragile.

She gave power a female face, and some say she softened politics and made it easier for her country to resume its historic dominance in Europe. She was careful never to boast about what had been regained. But she also failed to instill in her people a sense of responsibility and solidarity for fellow Europeans.

Her modest and moderate governance style, absent ideology and vanity, is the polar opposite of that of the strongmen now strutting the world stage. Her Germany — that “vulnerable hegemon,” as the intellectual Herfried Münkler calls it — became a beacon of liberalism.

But like her friend and ally President Barack Obama — America’s first black president, who was succeeded by President Trump — Ms. Merkel will be judged by what comes next.

“Angela Merkel personifies the best Germany we’ve ever known,” said Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European Studies at Oxford University. “She managed Germany’s rise to once again become Europe’s leading power. But she failed to prepare Germans sufficiently for what that means.”