Angela Merkel’s “Diamond”, a gesture that has become symbolic | Globalism

In the early 2000s, when she was not yet an executive but headed the (center-right) Christian Democrats, Merkel’s party, she “didn’t know where to put her hands,” as photographer Claudia Kempf explained a few years later about the gesture’s origin, Creative today.

“She would leave them hanging by her side, which made her look helpless. Or she would put them together and then I would say to her, ‘So you look like a pastor’s daughter,'” said the Rheinische Post’s photographer. in 2009.

In 2013, the chancellor gave her own version of how the gesture came to be, which is a personal discovery, according to her.

“There was always a question about where to put my arm, that’s how I got the idea,” she said a few months before that year’s legislative elections.

According to her, this “diamond” signifies “perhaps a certain love of symmetry”, which is reminiscent of Merkel’s style of government, which is characterized by pragmatism and the search for consensus, but it is also criticized for the lack of political vision at certain times.

In 2013, Merkel, who will step down as chancellor this year after 16 years at the helm of the German government, aspired to be re-elected for a third time.

Thus, the CDU based its campaign in these elections on the personality of the chancellor.

A giant 20 x 70 meter poster inspired by the famous gesture has been placed at Berlin Central Station.

On it was a picture of Lady Merkel making diamonds, accompanied by two thousand pictures of hands and the slogan: “The future of Germany is in good hands.”

This campaign enraged her rivals because of her personal character, and even on social networks they portrayed Merkel as Mao.

His opponents from the Social Democratic Party denounced the “brutal cult of personality and emptiness of content”. “If this is political, we fall too often,” he criticized the Greens.

However, the leader, known as “Muti” (Mother) by the Germans, visibly won this election and since then her gesture has, according to the British newspaper The Guardian, been “in one of the most reputable manual positions in the world”.

The “diamond” even has its own symbol and Wikipedia page, and at the famous Madame Tussauds wax museum in Berlin, the chancellor was photographed making the gesture.

Schultz imitated the Social Democrat

“I think the diamond was initially adopted unconsciously, then the public discovered its distinctive effect and consciously started using it as a brand,” Jochen Horrich, a communications specialist at the University of Munich, told AFP.

According to this university professor, who is the author of an article In His Hands, the ‘pleasant’ conveys calm, and unlike a clenched fist or an outstretched hand, it does not emit emotional signals, ‘allowing it to produce an average sense of ‘closeness and distance’.

There have been many interpretations of this gesture, from it representing a “bridge” or “protective roof” to conspiracies that saw him as evidence that he was part of the Illuminati, a supposed secret organization that would hold the reins of global power.

The symbol of the “diamond” has become so powerful that other German political figures, including opponents of the conservative leader, are trying to imitate it.

Such is the case of Social Democratic candidate Olaf Schultz, who in July appeared on the front page of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, presenting himself as the chancellor’s true successor, rather than conservative Armin Laschet, the unpopular Merkel’s political heir.

This takeover of Merkel’s style, which angered the chancellor herself, appears to have paid off, with the Social Democrats leading in opinion polls.

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