Dear Reader,

Since you last heard from me I went on holiday for a week and managed to bring back a coronavirus infection that I’m still feeling the lingering effects of. That partly explains the delay in starting to write again. 

More importantly, the world has changed almost beyond recognition since I last wrote a newsletter. The horrors currently unfolding in Ukraine make it hard to focus on the humdrum world of German domestic politics.

At the same time, the domestic political scene has been turned on its head in a way that we haven’t seen in years or even decades. Germany is being forced to confront the consequences of its lazy pieties, which have been ripped apart by the political realities that are tearing up the European political order on its eastern edge.

Cozying up to dictators in the name of peace is simply no longer a viable way of doing foreign policy.

Angela Merkel allegedly had two backdrops that she never let herself be photographed in front of. The first was a refugee home…