Everyone listened when Angela Merkel recently broke her silence.

She sat on the stage of a Berlin theater and spoke about Russia, Putin and the war.

After an hour and a half it was over.

But the most important question remained unanswered: how could she, of all people, fail because of Putin's Russia, the chancellor, who knows Putin better than almost anyone and who understands Russia so well?

Livia Gerster

Editor in the politics of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sunday newspaper.

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On stage, Merkel described it as an accident that even the most cautious can get involved in when rowdies disregard all the rules.

It sounded like something was suddenly different than before.

But it's just the sequel.

Where did Merkel misjudge and why?

When Angela Merkel became chancellor in 2005, two things in particular stood out about her: she was a woman and she had grown up in the GDR.

It was clear about the woman, everyone knew women.

The thing about the GDR was less clear, at least for those in the West.

Some West German men slandered both, for example in the CSU.

They baptized Merkel "Zone quail".

Other men started working for Merkel, in the Chancellery, in her team.

And even if some of them criticize their former boss today, they agree that Merkel has something that they and all heads of government in the western world lack: Eastern bloc competence.

Merkel not only knew a lot, she had experienced it herself.

That was worth something.

At school, Merkel, known as “Kasi” after her maiden name Kasner, had Russian lessons.

Just like all children in the GDR.

But she was more diligent, more curious, more talented than her classmates.

After class, she sometimes went into the forest, where Russian soldiers were stationed.

You really shouldn't talk to them.

Angela Kasner did it anyway, she wanted to use her Russian too.

She had excellent grades, which is why she was once even allowed to take the “Friendship Train” to the Russian Olympics in Moscow.

She read Russian literature, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, and she listened to the great Russian composers, later also with her husband, who is a great music lover.

As a young woman, she repeatedly traveled to the Soviet Union, sometimes on her own with a backpack, sometimes to meet other scientists.

She saw the giant empire from a frog's perspective, stood in line at the supermarket checkout, was a guest in small apartments, knew how Igor talked to normal people when he felt reasonably safe, which didn't happen often.

The Soviet state sowed mistrust to reap power.

Understanding of the brokenness of the Soviet people

This period shaped Merkel.

She often talked about it later, for example that Poland had always been the "happiest barracks" in the socialist camp.

As unfree as Merkel was under Soviet influence, she still felt close to people and culture.

One of her companions says she understood what was broken in the Soviet people, "perhaps because she had it a little bit herself."

So the feeling of being able to get under the wheels at any time.

Merkel was always fascinated by how outspoken and self-confident the West Germans appeared.

It was only at the very end of her chancellorship, on October 3 of last year, that she publicly criticized how West Germans still underestimated the biographies of East Germans.

Just as Merkel knew the East, Putin studied the West.

However, for other reasons.

He worked for the KGB in Dresden and polished his excellent German.

Merkel and Putin met for the first time in Berlin in 2000, when Putin was freshly elected president and Merkel was already the head of the CDU.