The fact that politics has something to do with staging was only reluctantly understood in Germany when Ronald Reagan became American President in 1981 - to make it immediately contemptible, because common anti-Americanism saw a former Hollywood actor in this office as an attack on the spirit of the West appeared.

Such a person shouldn't play a role!

In the meantime, politicians not only have strategy and PR consultants, but also image maintainers and preferred hairdressers.

And all the helpers know what you learn in every screenwriting seminar: no one is a hero by nature, but becomes so through circumstances.

This could be observed very well in Annalena Baerbock's performance in Kyiv last week.

She had the right body language, she said simple, clear, cogent sentences, she filled the vacancy left by the designated lead actor because he didn't want to drive.

It wasn't the tired, hesitant old sheriff who set off, but the courageous young woman – even if the model isn't intended for the classic western.

And Baerbock, although her performance was certainly thoroughly planned, seemed so natural and immediate that the staged character became unimportant, as in big Hollywood films, and only the effect counted.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the most talented, most lyrical actor who has grown into his role like a longtime series hero, immediately recognized this moment as one in which he could invite the entire federal government because this woman was their best representative, eclipsing everyone else would ask.

Habeck's Robert Redford nature

Nobody thought of Friedrich Merz in an unfamiliar multi-purpose jacket.

With a facial expression as if the Sauerland had been devastated by a meteorite, he faced Selenskyj in Kyiv.

And had a photographer with him, shaking hands with the President of Ukraine, who very unflatteringly showed the considerable size difference between the two, in a way that no decent director and producer would allow.

The moderately gifted actor Merz didn't manage to stay "in character" either.

Afterwards he had to boast that he was the only one who got Selenskyj invited by the chancellor and the federal president.

The roles of multi-purpose jacket wearer and opposition leader were no longer congruent.

That's usually the case with amateurs - they always think they have to play more, which leads to charging.

Merz could have learned – not so much from Baerbock, more from Robert Habeck.

Habeck is always assumed to be calculating whether he is talking to horses or jumping on the table in front of the workers in the Rosneft refinery in Schwedt like a people's tribune or labor leader in old films.

However, he never seems completely unsympathetic, because the pose is immediately followed by the reflexive break, because he displays what politicians are repeatedly asked for: intellectual scruples, the admission of being wrong - and still remaining capable of acting.

One can also easily recognize a self-portrayal in this.

And at the same time notice that Habeck is one of those actors who consciously never fully immerses themselves in their role.

Yet there is no glaring contradiction between his public self and the part he has to play politically.

It's a kind of Robert Redford-ness, if you will.

These stagings are aesthetically and politically superior to the crude historical propaganda on Red Square, also because they let you know that they are staged.

And because the decisive factor in the performances of Baerbock or Habeck is not that they play a role, but which role they have chosen.