Yesterday, on this cold July day, when one would have to have the heating on to get a bearable room temperature for desk work, Chancellor Merkel had her birthday. The claqueurs queue up to pay homage. Sigmar Gabriel has pushed himself right to the front. In the ‘Tagesspiegel’ the former representative of the Schröder government, SPD chairman and minister, announced that Merkel has “done the country good.” This is the basic tone of all worshipers, which is why it is not necessary to mention the other names.

When one reads Gabriel's justification for this bold assertion, one wonders whether he lives in a different universe from the common German people, sorry, the people currently populating the area of Germany. “Angela Merkel has mastered European crises and in really heavy seas kept not only her own country stable and on course, but to a large extent also our continent. The financial crisis 2007/2008, the Ukraine crisis 2014, the renewed financial crisis in Greece 2015, the refugee crisis 2015, the increase in terrorist threats in Germany and Europe 2016 – each and every one of these dramatic political escalations would have been enough for a political figure’s life to go down in history. And none of them could have been kept under control without German intervention. We must thank her for this, and not only because it is her birthday today.” How removed from reality do you actually have to be to produce such sentences?

Merkel’s keeping the country on course? Yes, but on a downward slope. Her longstanding chancellorship has turned a well-functioning country, whose productivity and respect of the rule of law have been admired around the world, into a spoilt loser nation. Germany, which under Helmut Kohl was well-liked and almost popular in Europe, is now largely isolated and hated again.

Merkel didn’t solve the financial crisis; instead she imposed on Germany irredeemable debts that will ruin the country when the financial bubble bursts. The Greek crisis continues to smoulder. Merkel's decision, made without any consultation, to open the borders brought the refugee crisis of 2015 to a head. Her ‘welcome culture’ now sees Germany isolated. All attempts to distribute the migrants summoned this way among the European countries have failed. Internally, the refugee policy has undermined the rule of law. Civil servants are being urged to violate rules and laws in order to cover up this failure. The increase in terrorist threats in Europe is closely linked to Merkel's opening of the borders. Whether in Brussels, Paris or Berlin: a number of perpetrators came to Europe on the great refugee trail.

The only reason we can’t speak of a failure of integration is because integration was never seriously demanded. To this day, we still do not know in every case who came and for what reason.

The German passport is given even to someone who cannot speak German or who refuses to receive it from a woman. In return, those “who have already been living here for some time” (Merkel on Germans) are advised to learn Turkish or Arabic in order to communicate with the new citizens. And of course to show understanding for the archaic perception of women, the affinity for violence and the rejection of our way of life.

Yes, Gabriel is right when he says that any one of these crises would be enough for a politician to go down in history. A place in history is absolutely certain for Merkel. But whether it really is a great feeling to go down in historical memory as the destroyer of a country is more than questionable.

Gabriel has not even mentioned one of Merkel's most serious mistakes: her devastating ‘energy policy,’ which is in the process of destroying the developed cultural landscape and the economy.

The power grid is already destabilized, the ‘renewables’ have not achieved a ‘climate target,’ but have merely turned the ‘energy revolution’ profiteers into millionaires, thanks to the largest redistribution program from bottom to top via electricity bills. This June a blackout was imminent three times and could only be averted by panic buying at mega prices on the power exchange. Nevertheless, the madness continues unabated. In Upper Bavaria, a new 300-megawatt gas power plant, Irsching 6, is to be built to “cover peak loads.” This means that it will be built as a ‘safety buffer’ for emergency situations such as those that occurred in June. Since such a plant cannot then be operated economically, however, the operator is guaranteed that the state, i.e. the electricity customers, will pay them to cover the loss. This will drive our electricity prices, already the highest in Europe, even higher. With the further expansion of ‘renewables’ further ‘safety buffers’ will be necessary and accelerate the price spiral. Aluminum smelters already have to be taken off the grid every so often in order to eliminate electricity bottlenecks. How long an industry will tolerate this is questionable.

One could bet on which crisis will be the first to break out in full. Chancellor Merkel is well aware of this. That's why she would’ve liked to have escaped to another position. But she has neither become UN Secretary General nor EU Commission President. She is doomed to have to remain Chancellor. Since she cannot let go of power, there is a good chance that she will still be in office, when her wrong decisions blow up in her face. Merkel's body is already reacting. Her tremor attacks, and recently also her speech disorders, act like an indirect admission of guilt.

You can't even feel ‘schadenfreude’ about it, because the devastating consequences will affect us all. When Merkel runs off to Paraguay, we will have to be the modern ‘Trümmerfrauen,’ like the ‘women in ruins’ who rebuilt the country after World War Two.

Translated from eigentümlich frei, where the original article was published on July 18th 2019.