We looked it up and it's actually true: the Basic Law only mentions one Federal Chancellor.

The current incumbent does indeed have a correct understanding of the constitutional order.

Anything else would have been surprising for a fully qualified lawyer.

However, less competent contemporaries are wondering whether we are experiencing a three-year chancellor for the first time since the Weimar Republic.

And not just one in which three chancellors rule in succession, but a year in which they officiate simultaneously, albeit in different ways.

Dark doldrums at Merkel

Bertolt Kohler

Editor.

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How did this unconstitutional impression come about?

Obviously, most Germans believe that Merkel is somehow still chancellor.

It is difficult to explain otherwise that she continues to lead the list of the most important politicians in the opinion polls, although she has not spoken publicly since the keys were handed over to Scholz.

But even before that, what is known in the energy industry as a dark doldrums often prevailed in Merkel's communication.

Apparently, the public has gotten so used to it over the past 16 years that it still considers Merkel's silence to be politics.

Your successor is also one of the quiet ones.

What can't be said of its predecessor.

He probably wanted to show his former secretary-general that a Schröder would not become a waiter even in retirement, but would remain a cook.

And Baerbock, how little she knows about foreign policy.

Why don't you go to the saber-ratters in Kiev first without kowtowing to the Kremlin first?

That really knocks the barrel out!

Looking at the calendar – the end of the month was approaching – some people think that by unwinding the Kremlin propaganda, Schröder only wanted to make sure that he would get another check from Moscow in February.

But that would be too cheap for us, despite the level of pay that a lackey of Putin can expect.

We rather think that Schröder wanted to say to the novices in the traffic light government: Folks, you just can't do it.

Schröder and Feminist Hydrogen Diplomacy

And it can hardly be disputed that Schröder, with his few macho statements on the crisis, made more of an impression in the capitals of the world than the entire federal government with its feminist hydrogen diplomacy.

Abroad, people are already wondering whether Schröder is actually back in power.

But what must not be cannot be!

If Schröder were to pull the strings again in Berlin, that would ultimately mean that we would (already) be ruled by Putin.

Of course, this is the only way to explain the international laughingstock with the five thousand helmets.

The temptation to come up with such a crazy gag would certainly not have been able to be resisted by the Kremlin boss.

No tutoring from a CSU Peacenik

So it is understandable that some prefer to cling to the idea that a shadow chancellor is haunting the corridors of the chancellery at night and telling Scholz in his sleep what not to say and what not to do.

Even the CSU-Peacenik Söder now advised Scholz to get advice on Russia from Merkel rather than from Gazprom-Gerd.

As if Scholz needed it!

Even without tutoring from the free South, he decided not to let Schröder represent German interests in Moscow any longer, but to set out there personally.

It is also only right and proper for the Chancellor himself to use one of the many channels of communication that Berlin has dug and kept open for Biden, Macron, Orbán and others in the course of the international division of labour.

Hopefully the separation of powers will not raise doubts about the power and uniqueness of our chancellor at the last minute.

A phone call that the British Prime Minister wanted to have with Putin had to be postponed because Johnson had to apologize in the House of Commons for the drinking at his official residence.

It's easy to imagine that Putin thought again: In democracies, it's not just the opposition that sucks.