SPD corrects its mistakes in Russia policy. When is Merkel coming?

In Germany there is still a lack of willingness to deal relentlessly with the relationship with Russia up to the start of the Ukraine war. If you did, you would have to pay more attention to the acoustics of the time, and consequently to the mood of the population. If one of the governing parties had behaved as desired before February 2022, it would not have been able to win a majority. The whore Zeitgeist had dedicated himself to Vladimir Putin.

Your outrage today at the policy of détente is reminiscent of the fickleness of our ancestors: if Wilhelm II had been against the war in 1914, he would have been swept off the throne. In 1918 the Germans chased him away because he had consented to the very act of arms that had been acclaimed by all four years earlier. The attitude towards the Kremlin is similar.

For the sake of future politics, it would be worth delving deeply into the imposter Zeitgeist. If this were to be done, many areas of society would not only have to show their colors - from the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations to the foundations, from the operators of town twinning to cultural institutions - but the question would also have to be answered as to what would become of them follows new insights.

Of course, what remains is what Faust warns his famulus Wagner to consider: "What you call the spirit of the times is basically the gentlemen's own spirit, in which the times are reflected." Which brings us back to the parties. So far, only one party has taken the coming to terms with its past seriously, apart from the Greens, who have less to blame. It's the SPD.

In many speeches, party leader Lars Klingbeil has shown that he goes far beyond the tendency that is so popular today to apologize in apparent self-contrition for misdeeds in the past and leave it at that. Klingbeil is making serious efforts to draw the necessary conclusions from the mistakes made in the second phase of the policy of detente, committed by all government parties since Helmut Kohl became chancellor.

Klingbeil's visit to Kiev with SPD parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich in tow represents the high point of this reappraisal so far. One wished for a similar gesture by the former CDU leader Angela Merkel. Apparently she was under monument protection during her lifetime and likes to make use of it.