The first five days in office were difficult for the new German Foreign Minister - but Annalena Baerbock also seemed to have found it easy.

Her Polish colleague Zbigniew Rau, who immediately fired a broad side of dissatisfaction with German-Polish relations during her visit to Warsaw, wished her “a little diplomatic luck too”;

if it were not there, you could hardly be successful as a minister.

This wish came true for Baerbock in her first ministerial week.

Johannes Leithäuser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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With her inaugural trips to Paris, Brussels and Warsaw, she was always a day or two ahead of the new Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz;

she got enough of her own attention for it.

And with her presence at the G-7 Foreign Ministers' Summit at the weekend, she was offered a stage, contacts to other colleagues from the Western world, additional topics beyond Europe and finally the opportunity to present Germany's new foreign policy priorities - international climate protection and more preventive crisis preparedness.

Beyond such favorable coincidences in the appointment calendar, the new Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs also benefits from personal characteristics: fearlessness and intuition.

Her first significant appearance on the morning after taking office took place at the Paris Foreign Ministry on the Quai d'Orsay.

The previous party leader of the Greens, who had previously spent her working days in a good-natured old stucco building in Berlin, stood suddenly in the midst of the prestigious splendor of a government palace from the 19th century.

She stood on an equal footing with the experienced, gnarled French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian - and flattered him, at least a little.

That was on Thursday.

On Saturday, both of them walked through the foyer of the conference building in Liverpool, chatting very familiarly at the G-7 summit.

Counterattack with your own positive moments

In between was Baerbock's inaugural visit to Warsaw, where another gruff-looking colleague, Zbigniew Rau, told her in a joint presentation to the press that everything was annoying and inadequate in German-Polish relations.

The German delegation then said, with astonishment, that in the confidential conversation before, the Polish Foreign Minister had been so benevolent and charming.

In any case, Baerbock endured the sudden change in weather without any external impetus.

She let the accusations by, instead of defending herself or even contradicting them, and preferred to counter them with her own positive and beautiful moments in the German-Polish relationship.

In Liverpool she chatted with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about flight routes and travel destinations - “When did you land?” - and she was hugged by the hostess Liz Truss as a greeting. The Briton was happy to have another colleague in the septet of the most important foreign ministers in the western world and made all sorts of attempts at a political questioning.

At the meeting in the Liverpool City Museum - between prehistoric dinosaurs, model ships and stuffed seagulls - the foreign ministers discussed the world's crises every ninety minutes.

Jens Plötner, Political Director and Chief Diplomat of the Foreign Office, acted as Baerbocks Sherpa on this tour.

Baerbock's maiden tour in international diplomacy was his farewell tour in his previous role.

Plötner changes his place of work this Tuesday and becomes head of the foreign policy department in the Chancellery.