On Thursday, the German Chancellor said goodbye to the authorities with a military ceremony in her honor. The musical repertoire of the holiday was headed by Angela Merkel, who surprised everyone by choosing a song by the German punk singer Nina Hagen to perform.
The “Grosser Zapfenstreich” ceremony is a German tradition to honor politicians leaving power. As it happened at the end of the day, the celebration included a torch parade. Angela Merkel will step down as chancellor next week after 16 years at the helm of Germany’s future.
Like her predecessors, the German Chancellor still had the right to choose three songs to be performed: the first was the Christian anthem Grosser Gott, “wir loben dich” (in Portuguese “great God, we praise you”), the second was the German singer Hildegard Knef , “Für mich, soll’s rote Rosen regnen” (“It must rain red roses for me”). Finally, the last and most surprising choice was the 1974 East German hit by punk rock singer Nina Hagen “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen” (The Forgotten Color Film).
66-year-old Nina Hagen became a punk icon in West Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Like Merkel, Hagen hails from the former East Germany, and German media have suggested that the chancellor’s musical choice was symbolic at the time of her departure.
According to The Guardian, the Chancellor may have wanted to give the music a modern reading, a kind of “howl of frustration at men who don’t do their jobs properly,” in criticizing her male colleagues.
Due to the pandemic, the event, which took place in the courtyard of the Ministry of Defense, attracted a smaller audience than usual – just 200 people.
