"We are saved," tweeted Ludovic Subran, "all submarine specialists and virologists who speak Dari fluently and see through the balance sheet of a Chinese real estate company are now explaining to us what is at stake in the federal elections."

Michaela Wiegel

Political correspondent based in Paris.

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The Frenchman, chief economist at Allianz, is not entirely wrong with his ridicule. The French news and radio stations have fully switched to “Allemagne”, and it is not always those who are familiar with Germany who give their election forecasts and analyzes to the best of their ability. But it seems to many that it is not about Germany's future at all, but about an imaginary country on the other side of the Rhine.

The editor-in-chief of “Liberation”, Dov Alfon, thinks of “Autobahn” and “Wetterstein” and “Merkel” about Germany, as he frankly admits in his comment. Perhaps that is why he had the special edition entitled “Mom, it's over!”. Fortunately, “Liberation” has a Germany correspondent who expertly takes stock. The print press with “Le Monde”, “Le Figaro”, “Les Echos” and other titles, like Radio France and RFI, always has journalists on post in Berlin. This is not the case with most TV news channels, and even the largest private TV broadcaster TF1 only occasionally flies a reporter to Berlin. In his book “Foreign Wound” (“Lésion étrangère”) the TF1 reporter Alain Chaillou describes how great the prejudices against the neighboring country are in his editorial team.Germany is considered "chiant", so "shitty".

The parliamentary system of the Federal Republic remains alien to many French. The fact that Merkel cannot govern as the French president as Federal Chancellor usually takes a back seat when looking back in the press. Reaction instead of action, this is how it is described. It is rarely mentioned that Merkel shared power with the SPD for twelve years in her sixteen years in power.

Olaf Scholz has managed to introduce himself as an opposition leader and man of renewal.

Anne Hidalgo, the socialist presidential candidate and mayor of Paris, sat down in the Thalys especially to be at the last Scholz rally in Cologne.

She hopes his possible win could rub off on her.

At the same time, she would like to be the Merkel of France, which fits in with Scholz's election posters.

But the right-wing candidate Valérie Pécresse also promises to be “two thirds Merkel and one third Thatcher”.

Scholz or Laschet?

Merkel's nostalgia has reached a climax in the media, as it meets with the truism, which is very popular in France, that everything was somehow better in the past. The Chancellor is the fixed point around which all media reports revolve. The journalist Marion Van Renterghem, whose book “C'était Merkel” (“That was Merkel”) brought this Germany story to the fore, brought it to the fore. Under the heading (in German) “Goodbye”, the author wrote a farewell portrait of the Chancellor for the news magazine L'Express. The headline is ambiguous: Van Renterghem was never granted an interview appointment despite countless attempts, so it can hardly be a reunion.

“Merkel is a pop icon,” is Van Renterghem's thesis. Characteristics such as modesty, indecency and honesty are cult in a nation whose presidents rule with the full power and in the palaces of republican monarchs. In her entertaining “PodKast” with the title “Die Politik nach Merkel”, the Germany correspondent Hélène Kohl sketched the future. She introduced Olaf Scholz, Armin Laschet and Annalena Baerbock, but the largest audience was given to the recording on Angela Merkel. The final spurt in the election campaign is being followed primarily through French glasses: Who would be the best chancellor for the French? The journalist Jean-Dominique Merchet from L'Opinion put it in a nutshell: Scholz would be good for finances and bad for defense,Good for defense and bad for finances.