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Former Chancellor Angela Merkel
Photo: Sebastian Willnow / dpa
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has had time for the finer things again since she left the Chancellery. Visits to festivals or tributes. Now she has taken an appointment that has been in the making since 1973: the 50th anniversary of her high school graduation class.
The class reunion took place at the weekend in Templin, Brandenburg, as the "Bild" newspaper now reported. On the agenda was a steamboat trip with the MS "Uckermark" across several lakes, followed by a meal. Pictures show Merkel talking to former school friends and classmates and on the upper deck of the steamer. A bodyguard accompanied the ex-chancellor.
In 1973, Merkel graduated from high school in class 12b at the Extended Secondary School (EOS) in Templin.
"Not a trace of snooty, not even as chancellor"
Contact with the class is apparently not uncommon. "We meet regularly, but 50 years is of course something special," the Bild newspaper quoted a classmate as saying. We trust each other," said another classmate. The former class is aware of the private address and telephone number of the former Chancellor.
It was only in July that Merkel appeared at the opening of the Bayreuth Richard Wagner Festival together with her husband Joachim Sauer. Shortly before, she received an honorary doctorate from Sciences Po in Paris, it is her 20th such title.
Merkel was chancellor from 2005 to 2021, but she did not run again in the last federal election and subsequently withdrew from politics. After the end of her chancellorship, she came under criticism for her Russia policy in view of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In an interview with SPIEGEL reporter Alexander Osang, she defended herself: She did not blame herself, Merkel said.
Mrc