BERLIN — Little is known about how Germany’s former Chancellor Angela Merkel is spending her retirement, and that seems to be the way she likes it. Thanks to a German crime fiction series adapted for television and now proving a hit in Italy, she is back in the headlines — this time as a fictional small-town amateur sleuth.
As the title suggests, Miss Merkel is a whodunnit that imagines the former chancellor as an Agatha Christie-style detective who starts solving crimes out of sheer boredom. For want of a G7 or European Union summit, Merkel is desperate to put down the garden shears and get back to solving something, anything! This time, it’s a village murder. Move over, Miss Marple!
The TV adaptation stars German theater doyenne Katharina Thalbach as Merkel. Like Merkel, Thalbach is 70 and from former East Germany. She says it wasn’t too hard to prepare for the role.
“You could always see the burden of power in Merkel’s shoulders, how it weighed on her,” Thalbach tells NPR. “So, I focused on my shoulders, put on a wig and one of her signature colorful boxy blazers and I had the feeling I was her. That I am Angela Merkel!”
Thalbach has met Merkel a number of times but is not sure whether the ex-chancellor is a fan of Miss Merkel.
“The last time I saw Angela, I tried to find out whether she’s read the books or seen the series,” Thalbach recalls. “But she deftly dodged the question, saying instead that her office staff are big fans.”
The books’ author, David Safier, known previously for his fictional accounts of the Holocaust and his work as a scriptwriter, says he’s also none the wiser as to what Merkel thinks of his alternative retirement plan for her.
“Probably she has read the novels,” Safier speculates. “To be honest, if there would be a crime novel where you are the hero, wouldn’t you at least read the first 10 pages?”
While the books are a commercial success, the small-screen adaptation by RTL — which will be available to stream later this year in the U.S. — has received lukewarm reviews in Germany. The broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung acknowledged the star power that Thalbach’s performance brings to the production, but lamented the show’s “corny jokes.” German magazine Fokus suggested the production company engage Safier as the scriptwriter, seeing as he won an Emmy for a German sitcom Berlin, Berlin.
Safier came up with the idea for Miss Merkel in 2019, on the day Merkel announced she wouldn’t be running for a fifth term. He says he sat down to watch an old rerun of Columbo that same evening and the idea for his top-10 Spiegel bestseller was born.
Safier says Angela Merkel makes for a consummate detective.
“Merkel is highly intelligent, much more intelligent than other politicians,” he says. “She is strongheaded. And, after 30 years in politics, she’s used to dealing with sociopaths and psychopaths.”
Like Miss Marple, Merkel is often underestimated — something the former chancellor used to her advantage throughout her political career. Thalbach says this particularly baffled alpha-male politicians.
“The real Merkel was brilliant at finding skeletons in the closets of her political rivals,” Thalbach asserts. “But she had none of her own: the perfect trait for an ace detective!”
Safier says it’s the references to Merkel’s former life as chancellor that tickle his readers.
In the first book, Miss Merkel attends a community theater production and remarks that “compared to six hours of Beijing Opera with Xi Jinping, everything else is a piece of cake.”
“Her experience helps her to solve crime mysteries. When she’s questioning a suspect, she knows that she has to wear him down,” Safier says of his main character. “Merkel knows what it’s like to probe and ask questions over and over again. She did it until the early hours at countless EU summits.”
Unlike Miss Marple, Merkel is actually a Mrs. — a Frau Dr., that is, with a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry. In the TV series, Merkel’s husband asks why she’s still wearing her trademark pantsuits in retirement. Her answer could be considered classic Merkel logic: “I’ve still got 50 of them in my wardrobe.”
Angie nostalgia aside, Safier says that in his next book, Miss Merkel is seeing a therapist after realizing, while writing her memoirs, that she neglected to solve a number of issues during her time in office — be it Germany’s ailing railway system or relations with Russia.
Merkel was something of an enigma in office. Now, in retirement, the fictional version of her is an open book. The real version is set to be revealed in November. That’s when Safier’s next installment comes out — and when the real Merkel publishes her autobiography.
Transcript:
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The far-right Alternative for Germany party, or AfD for short, is leading the polls ahead of state elections in the part of the country once known as East Germany. With voters living in algorithm-driven echo chambers, an unlikely cohort of women is reaching out to the party’s supporters in a bid to revive the lost art of debate and change minds, as Esme Nicholson reports.
(CROSSTALK)
ESME NICHOLSON, BYLINE: It’s Saturday in the cathedral city of Erfurt. A group of women in their 70s have gathered on a medieval market square, holding up signs that read (speaking German), or Grandmas Against the Far Right. They are part of a nationwide movement of retired women who’ve had it with hatred.
Seventy-six-year-old Gabriele Wolke-Rebhan co-founded the local chapter out of sheer worry. She says, this region is where the Nazis first seized power, and now it’s where Bjorn Hocke – considered the far-right AfD party’s most extreme figure – is running to become the next state governor.
GABRIELE WOLKE-REBHAN: (Through interpreter) Hitler happened because people stood silently by. If I stay silent now, I’m no better than my parents in the 1930s.
NICHOLSON: Wolke-Rebhan says she’s not just here to speak up but to listen as well. She wants to understand why 1 in 3 people here are planning to vote AfD, even though Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has the party under surveillance for suspected anticonstitutional activities. She says, not everybody is willing to stop and chat.
WOLKE-REBHAN: (Through interpreter) The far right ridicule us and think we’re just silly old women. What they don’t seem to understand is that women become unflappable with age. It’s a mistake to underestimate us.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
NICHOLSON: One of the grandmas is talking to a well-dressed man in his 70s. After a couple of minutes, he loses his temper and walks off, cursing at her. Wolke-Rebhan takes a deep breath and says, they refuse to write anyone off as deplorable, even if it’s tough at times.
WOLKE-REBHAN: (Through interpreter) We get a lot of encouragement from passersby, but we also get a lot of abuse. It’s men of my generation who are the worst, really below the belt. And they’re retirees, many of them living pretty comfortable lives.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELL RINGING)
NICHOLSON: At the nearby farmers market, 79-year-old Rudi is doing his weekly shop, picking through organic summer produce. The softly spoken retired engineer avoids the grandmas. He says no amount of chatting will change his mind.
RUDI: (Through interpreter) I’m voting AfD. It’s the only party that cares about us, the people who have always lived here. Right now, the immigrants rule. They come first. The benefits they get are better than the hourly wages of most Germans in this part of the country.
NICHOLSON: Rudi, who wouldn’t give his full name but was eager to talk, insists that AfD voters are given a bad rap.
RUDI: (Through interpreter) I’ve read what the mainstream media writes about us. It’s all lies. I’ve stopped reading it.
NICHOLSON: He says, he now gets his news from Telegram and YouTube. Rudi is exactly the kind of voter Marc Rohlig, a reporter for Der Spiegel, is trying to reach. Rohlig grew up in the region and now writes about it. He says, not all AfD voters have stopped reading his articles.
MARC ROHLIG: (Through interpreter) I used to receive anonymous threats, but people have become more brazen and now send me hate mail from their work addresses, cell number included. So I’ve started calling them back.
NICHOLSON: Rohlig says, this takes his hate mailers by surprise.
ROHLIG: (Through interpreter) Confronting people takes the sting out of their hatred. Most of the time, we find a way to talk to each other in a civil manner and often end up chatting about personal issues and everyday worries.
NICHOLSON: But back in Erfurt, the performative outrage of social media spills over onto the streets as another passerby spouts abuse at the grandmas.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: (Non-English language spoken).
NICHOLSON: A recent study suggests that voting for the AfD negatively impacts mental health. It found that a year after joining the party, the majority of respondents reported a deterioration in their well-being…
(LAUGHTER)
NICHOLSON: …Something that can’t be said for the Grandmas Against the Far Right, who, despite their worries, seem pretty happy with democracy. After all, here in former East Germany, they remember what it’s like to live without it. For NPR News, I’m Esme Nicholson in Erfurt.
(SOUNDBITE OF GIANTS’ NEST’S “SURF THE ORANGE WATER”)
