It is normal for a powerful person to be transported from the present to contemporary history when they leave office.

But no German head of government has become historical as quickly as Angela Merkel.

Less than half a year after her last official act as Federal Chancellor, the sixteen years in which she determined the fate of the Federal Republic seem like an epoch that is not just over, but actually sunk and irretrievably lost.

Anyone who thinks about those years today is stepping into a kingdom of ghosts, and it is therefore only logical that the first re-encounter with Angela Merkel does not take place on television or at a public celebration, but in the museum.

Andrew Kilb

Feature correspondent in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

The German Historical Museum Berlin is showing sixty pictures from the portrait series that the photographer Herlinde Koelbl has taken of Angela Merkel since 1991.

The oldest photo was taken shortly after Merkel's appointment as Minister for Women and Youth in the third Kohl cabinet, the youngest shortly before the end of her chancellorship.

Nevertheless, contrary to what the DHM promises, what you see here are not stations of a political career, but rather the transformations and disguises of a body and a face.

There's the era of checked blazers and solid-colored blazers, the era of gold and then pearl necklaces, the era of collared and collarless blouses, the era of silk scarves that are disappearing and pantsuits that are coming.

And there's the metamorphosis of a smile

Of the 15 photos of a smiling Angela Merkel that have been put together in a kind of mosaic on a side wall, only one is from previous years, but it leaves the strongest impression because it takes stock of thirty years of party and government politics.

The serenity that lights up in the Chancellor's features is more memory than reality, she has only just left the realm of worry from which she springs and will immediately plunge back into it.

Long before that, at the beginning of her career, this woman recognized that in the public eye she had "become shy of people," "not the way I was anymore," and "very exhausted, at the limit of my resilience."

But now she knows.

Her kindness, her tenacity,

This is reflected in her appearance.

If you overexert yourself, you have to save energy.

The pose, still playful in early portraits, sometimes uncertain, becomes static.

The “rhombus”, the finger cage, her trademark from 1998, closes off the figure at the front, dividing the water in space like a ship's bow.

Above it, supported by the blazer and blouse, the head floats at the greatest possible distance from the ground.

Even with those heads of state who towered far above her physically, Merkel was always at eye level.

What others had in height, she made up for in stature.

Only one animal in the picture could upset her, the lord of the dogs in the Kremlin felt that with a sure instinct.

In an interview with the photographer, she compared herself to a camel: In this way, she could store a supply of sleep in order to use it up during all-night sessions.

But then you have to "refuel again".

You don't see anything about that, about refueling, in these photographs, which, despite their closeness, are also always a facade.

Happiness lives beyond the pictures.

Photography, Roland Barthes wrote, is such a "valuable miracle" because it shows a reality "from which we are protected".

But you never had to be protected from Angela Merkel: It was she who used her clothes and gestures to hide from prying eyes.

Each of her portraits is an offer to negotiate.

Perhaps it is in this unrestricted rule of the civil that the hopelessly fairytale-like, phantasmagorical quality of this photo exhibition lies.

Meanwhile, the armored male body in a suit rules again, with his face as a turret and lookout.

This is how the contemporaries of southern German Biedermeier must have felt after 1871, when the national soul suddenly wore a spiked helmet and peace was bought with war.

A few months ago, you wouldn't have believed

that words like "Panzerhaubitze" could become part of political speech again.

The time of peace is finally over.

You can see it in this exhibition.

Herlinde Kolbl.

Angela Merkel.

Portraits 1991-2021.

German Historical Museum, until September 4th.

The catalog costs €50.