DER SPIEGEL HAS featured a controversial photo of Chancellor Angela Merkel on its cover, claiming that some Europeans see a “Fourth Reich” when they look at Germany.
The doctored photo shows Merkel (in colour) superimposed onto a black-and-white photograph of a group of Nazis.
Inside the magazine, an article authored by “Spiegel staff” goes further into the reasons behind the cover, saying:
For a long time, it was primarily the Germans who obsessed about their country’s Nazi past, but recently, other countries in Europe have joined them. Chancellor Angela Merkel with a Hitler moustache, German tanks heading south: There has been a flood of such caricatures in Greece, Spain, Britain, Poland, Italy and Portugal in recent weeks and years. And Nazi symbols have become de rigueur at anti-austerity demonstrations.
They add that people have begun talking about a “Fourth Reich”, which “may sound absurd” given that Germany is a democracy, and that “no one would actually associate Merkel with Nazism”.
But they say that the term ‘Reich’, or empire “may not be entirely out of place”.
They also write about Germany’s economic power, but how years of mass unemployment in the country have to led to anger. The full article can be read here.
What do you think of the cover?
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say