Former Chancellor Angela Merkel is working on an autobiography together with her close associate and confidant Beate Baumann, Baumann announced in an interview with Der Spiegel.
The book will take two to three years to complete, will be a personal look back at Merkel’s sixteen years as Chancellor and describe her life.
Baumann, who has assisted and advised Merkel since the start of her political career in the 1990s, says the intention is not to retell her entire life.
“She wants to clarify her most important political decisions in her own words and look back on her life,” said Baumann, who is known for being taciturn and discreet. The memoirs will be co-written by Merkel and Baumann, without outside help. “The Chancellor and I were in complete agreement: if there was a book, we would do it together, without ghostwriters, without historians and without journalists.”
As a confidant, Baumann wrote some of her most important speeches and was also involved in strategic decisions.
Merkel, 67, has remained silent about her plans for the future after handing over her duties to her successor, Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, this week. Earlier this year, in an interview with Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, she said she “wants to think carefully about the next phase in my life”.
Merkel: “Do I want to write, do I want to give speeches, do I want to go hiking, do I want to stay at home, do I want to see the world? I have decided to do nothing and see what happens.”