After 16 years as German chancellor, Angela Merkel would like to start her retirement "with a little sleep", but her reticence about her future has sparked a torrent of speculation.
A few days later, specifically on the eighth of this month, Merkel took over the reins of power to her successor, Olaf Scholz, after four mandates she completed at the helm.
Indeed, the 67-year-old chancellor will not regret leaving the responsibility for solving the country's problems to anyone else.
"I will understand very quickly that it is all someone else's responsibility," she said during a visit to Washington this summer, with her trademark smile on her face.
As she has repeatedly said, her priority will be to take a break after a thirty-year political career.
She once said in Washington that she imagines herself "trying to read something," adding, "I'll start closing my eyes because I'm tired, I'll sleep a little, and then we'll see where that takes me."
Tamblyn, where Merkel grew up (Getty Images)
Writing or traveling
And if Merkel left the questions of all those who interviewed her about her future projects unanswered, perhaps it is because she herself seems to be really wondering about the matter.
She recently explained during a public meeting that, since her first term as an MP in 1990, after German unification, "I no longer ask myself, of course, what interests me most outside politics."
"I don't have unlimited time in front of me, which means that I now want to think about what I want to do in the next period of my life," she added.
"Do I want to write, do I want to talk, do I want to take nature trips, do I want to stay at home, do I want to travel the world?" Merkel asked.
"I've decided to do nothing for the time being and wait for what's next," she concluded, disappointing once again those who would have liked to see her announce a lecture tour, write her memoirs, or, as she once mentioned, take a trip to the American Rockies.
And last week, she was seen in a video clip that went viral on the "Tik Tok" application, in the sports shoes section of a supermarket in Berlin, and activists on the Internet concluded that she was preparing for an active period of retirement.
Kann nicht aufhören mir Angela Merkel in Nike AirForce vorzustellen not gonna lie.
pic.twitter.com/WSlq8OUud7
— noreen (@noreenthiel) November 29, 2021
Merkel's predecessors were rarely long without work. After leaving the chancellery in 1982, Helmut Schmidt became associate editor of the reference weekly Die Zeit.
Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder also succeeded in exploiting their experiences. The former established a consulting company, and the latter carried out duties, including taking over the board of directors of the Russian oil giant "Rosneft" in a controversial role.
"Miss Merkel"
The novelist David Xaver has imagined another possible transformation for Merkel. In a comic police novel released a few months ago, he launched the character "Miss Merkel" (Ms. Merkel), inspired to some extent by the character "Miss Marple" in Agatha Christie's novels, in an investigation into a mysterious crime that was directed The former chancellor of Hana retired.
And it is assumed that Merkel will now have time to benefit with her husband, Joachim Sauer, from a modest house they own, 80 km north of Berlin, in the former East Germany, where she grew up.
Merkel during a meeting with her citizens (Reuters)
Merkel, who is keen to give the image of a normal woman like all other women, told the weekly "Bonte" magazine that she would like to grow vegetables and potatoes in the garden of that house.
But this program may not be enough to fill the seven assistants and two drivers who have been put into the service of Merkel, who will receive a pension of 15,000 euros, according to a calculation by the taxpayers' association, unless the former scientist decides to engage in academic activity.