From left, Hendrik Wuest, Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Berlin’s mayor Michael Mueller, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her designated successor Olaf Scholz, proper, arrive to deal with a press convention following a gathering with the heads of presidency of Germany’s federal states on the Chancellery in Berlin on Thursday Dec. 2, 2021. (John Macdougall/Pool by way of AP)
AP
BERLIN
One week earlier than she steps apart, outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel is being handled to a standard sendoff Thursday, involving a army ceremony with a brass band enjoying her selection of music — reported to incorporate a Seventies punk music.
The army tattoo in Merkel’s honor will happen on the Protection Ministry moderately than in a extra public setting, reflecting the constraints and restricted company dictated by the pandemic.
German each day taz reported that Merkel has requested three songs, two of which the Employees Band of the Bundeswehr needed to scramble to rearrange.
One is the 18th century Christian hymn “Holy God, we Reward thy Title,” maybe a pure selection for the daughter of a Protestant pastor.
The second is a well-liked chanson by German singer Hildegard Knef known as “It Shall Rain Crimson Roses for Me.”
Merkel’s third selection, which raised some eyebrows, is the music “You Forgot the Colour Movie” launched in 1974 by East German-born punk singer Nina Hagen. In it, the singer recounts a younger lady’s lament that her boyfriend did not take shade photos of their seaside vacation.
Hagen, like Merkel, grew up in East Germany, however emigrated to the West in 1976 after clashing with the communist nation’s authorities.
Merkel, who’s caretaker chancellor till her successor is sworn in, defined that the music was “a spotlight of my youth, which is thought to have taken place within the GDR.” East Germany was formally generally known as the German Democratic Republic.
“By likelihood, (the music) can also be set in a area that was in my former constituency” on the Baltic Sea, she added. “As such, all of it suits collectively.”
Earlier than Thursday night’s ceremony, she met different federal and state leaders to agree new measures to curb coronavirus infections in Germany.
