On Thursday of the coming week it will not only be a year since Germany had to say goodbye to its first female Chancellor.

The most prominent text message writer also left the political arena.

As chancellor, Angela Merkel used the "Short Message Service" extensively and - as has been assured - largely exclusively for quick and uncomplicated communication with many political actors.

At least it has not become known that she would have sent messages via Whatsapp or other messenger services, while a lot was said about her SMS.

Some also whispered.

Eckhart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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A short SMS from Merkel, with which she replied to a much longer one from the then SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel, achieved the greatest notoriety, albeit not glorious for everyone involved.

Shortly after his re-election, Horst Köhler declared, not only to the Chancellor's surprise but even more to his displeasure, that he intended to give up the office of Federal President.

Gabriel then informed Merkel that she could count on the support of the SPD if she decided to select the East German pastor and first head of the Stasi records authority, Joachim Gauck, as a candidate.

Merkel thanked Gabriel briefly but correctly for the information.

Then the almost unthinkable happened: the exchange between the two party leaders ended up in public.

Firstly, since it is known how Merkel abhors such breaches of trust, and secondly, since she could not have had any interest in publication because she wanted another candidate (Christian Wulff), one could guess who had pushed through the confidential exchange.

In any case, there is said to have been a long break between Merkel and Gabriel.

Another SMS case from the life of the chancellor is still shrouded in mystery.

Or rather: a suspected SMS case.

On March 1, 2011, Merkel and her Minister of Education (and confidants) Annette Schavan were at the Cebit in Hanover.

Merkel's cell phone rang, the chancellor looked at it, smiled to herself, and passed the cell phone on to Schavan, who looked at it somewhat ambiguously.

It was the day that the former political superstar from the CSU Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg resigned from the post of defense minister.

Was that the text message that told Merkel about it?

Would she have been happy then, although she appreciated Guttenberg?

And will the public ever know?

Just a year ago, a court refused to release the Chancellor's SMS.

While the chancellorship of the prominent user lasted 16 years, the SMS has lasted almost twice as long.

This Saturday she celebrates her 30th birthday, albeit in a shrinking circle.

It was December 3, 1992 when British computer engineer Neil Papworth sent the first text message.

Unlike Whatsapp or other successors, the SMS is not sent over the Internet, but over the mobile network.

The text messages can also be sent without internet access.

When Angela Merkel was on her way to the top, SMS was able to keep up for a while.

Even in her second legislative period between 2009 and 2013, record reports were spread of hundreds of millions, soon billions, of text messages being sent.

But while Merkel was able to stabilize her position and was resolutely approaching her third term in office, smartphones, i.e. (almost) constant mobile access to the Internet, posed an existential threat to SMS: the very possibility of sending short messages via the Internet.

The decline of the short message service, which Merkel used so much, took its course.

While users sent 60 billion SMS in 2012, in 2019 it was not even nine billion.

However, it has to be said that Angela Merkel's political decline had also begun after she announced in autumn 2018 that she was withdrawing from the CDU presidency and would no longer be available as a candidate for chancellor in the next election.

Albeit with some delay, Angela Merkel and the SMS have descended together from the highest peaks of their successes.