German Social Democrat Vice Chancellor Gabriel visits the town of Heidenau that saw violent clashes between right wing anti-asylum demonstrators and the police over the past three days. It is not his first trip to a refugee crisis hotspot in Germany.
His boss and 'grand coalition' partner, conservative Chancellor Ms. Merkel, remains silent until mid Monday and has never visited an asylum seekers center or a refugee residence.
When the official government speaker finally tells the press, Ms. Merkel finds the violence 'disgraceful' and 'not acceptable', the wire services proclaim she made a statement.
On Monday afternoon, she finally appears on TV at a press conference with French Prime Minister Hollande.
This is very much the MO of the current German chancellor, and it has earned her her very own Twitter hashtag #MerkelSchweigt (Merkel is silent).
Internationally well respected, liked my the majority of Germans - according to polls - her style can framed in any way you like. Thoughtful or hesitant, uninspiring or down to earth, soothing or unresponsive, a speaker without empathy or a realist with the right priorities.
To the blogster, it seems this makes her somewhat of a mirror, even to the media, who were supposed to not be easily dazzled.
It was a bit of a surprise to the blogster to find out that even most Germans do not have a good grasp of who their head of government is. They know that she grew up in what was then East Germany after her family moved there from West Germany. She became a member of the socialist youth organization, studied physics and received a PhD in physics, and ended up in the conservative Christian Democratic Party after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Her Stasi file is sealed for a few more decades, and there have been persistent rumors that she, like many East Germans, was a confidential informant of the Stasi. She was mentored by then conservative chancellor Kohl and ended up leading the country since 2005.
In authoritarian countries, keeping your opinions to yourself and being able to follow the party line are well established mechanisms to stay out of trouble, but how much of her way of governing does this explain?
Despite appearances to the contrary and exceptions to the rule, Germany's top politicians generally do not find quirks and flaws laid out in public as easily as leaders of other nations. Only years after someone has retired for good, will scenes of anger and pettiness enter the narrative to a substantial extent, for example, lurid stories of a former interior secretary flinging files at office aides or the timing, down to every jealous last second, of a speech by a foreign secretary.
So, from afar, we can only go by reactions to other high profile events. When nothing can go wrong, Ms. Merkel is as quick as anybody.
When the Germanwings plane was crashed into an alpine mountain side by a deranged co-pilot earlier this year, Ms. Merkel was at the crash site within a day.
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