By René Pfister
When Angela Merkel visited her party's parliamentary group in mid-April, she didn't talk about how she wants to change the pension system. Tolls on German highways were also not on her list, nor were all the problems with diesel emissions in the country. She didn't even complain about the Christian Social Union (CSU), the outspoken Bavarian sister party to her Christian Democrats. Instead, she wanted to talk about the Peace of Augsburg, signed in 1555.
The chancellor has made frequent excursions into history lately. Indeed, the Peace of Augsburg also came up four weeks ago during her visit to the residence of the German ambassador in Washington. The treaty initiated a 60-year phase of peace between Protestants and Catholics after the bloody turmoil of the Reformation and it initially seemed as though people had finally come to their senses. But that image turned out to be a deceptive one. In 1618, a war began unlike any the Continent had ever seen before. By the time the inferno ended 30 years later, large parts of Germany had been depopulated and many cities left in ruins.
To Merkel, the Peace of Augsburg is much more than some distant historical date. Rather, it is a warning of just how thin the varnish covering civilization really is. Just as people in the late 16th century were erroneous in their belief that the Peace of Augsburg would be enduring, we could be just as mistaken today in the belief that the postwar order, with all its treaties and alliances, serves as a guarantee that the scourge of war will not return.
"The coming decades will show us whether we have learned from history," Merkel said in Washington after a lunch with Donald Trump. Accompanying her on her travels in recent weeks -- to the United States, Beijing and Shenzhen -- one doesn't get the impression that Merkel is particularly optimistic. If you look at the world through her lens, the riders of the apocalypse are already appearing on the horizon.
After the financial crisis of 2008, Merkel had hoped there would be an international agreement to tame the capital markets, just as the international community had been able to agree on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights after 1948, following the war and the Holocaust. But it never happened. And now, she sees the pillars of the world order teetering everywhere.
Merkel Harbors No Illusions about Trump
Donald Trump? For her, he is a man who has turned back the historical clock to zero hour and casts doubt on everything that has united the West for decades: NATO, trade agreements and the United Nations. Many in the German government had hoped that Trump wouldn't be so bad once he was actually sworn in. But Merkel is no longer under any illusions. Trump is implementing his campaign promises, no matter how asinine they might be, as if going down a checklist. Last week, he made good on his pledge to impose punitive tariffs on aluminum and steel from Europe.
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