Merkel’s legacy is shaped by migration and austerity
CHEMNITZ, Germany — Two weeks after announcing that she would not seek another term, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany was standing in an old locomotive factory in the eastern city of Chemnitz, the scene of far-right protests this year.
Outside, 2,500 protesters shouted: “Merkel must go!” Inside, 120 people — more polite but scarcely less hostile — had come to challenge the chancellor on her legacy, which on this November afternoon was mostly reduced to one action: her 2015 decision to welcome more than 1 million migrants into Germany.
“You said we would manage,” one man said, quoting Merkel’s now famous mantra back at her. “But we’re not managing.”
The world and the values she embodied through 13 years in power are in danger. Some now ask whether her leadership, in particular on migration and economic austerity, helped plant the seeds of the forces now tearing Europe apart.
Merkel has pledged to finish out her term, which ends in 2021. But even if she defies the political obituary writers, the time in between is likely to be less than a victory lap for a chancellor who has been the face of stability in Germany and Europe, for better or worse.
“I know my face is polarizing,” Merkel conceded in Chemnitz. That is true in Athens, Budapest and Rome as well.
Merkel has been both chancellor of Germany and the leader of Europe. She steered her country and the continent through successive crises as she helped Germany become Europe’s leading power for the first time since two world wars.
No one has shaped the Europe of today more than this vicar’s daughter from the former Communist East who was celebrated as the guardian of the liberal Western order.
Merkel allowed Germans to be proud again, but on her watch the old demons of nationalism stirred back to life, too. The European Union she fought so hard to preserve is assailed by populist leaders.
Those contradictions rest at the core of the Merkel legacy. As German chancellor, Merkel oversaw a golden decade for Europe’s largest economy, which expand-