Style Critique: Election Night, How Could She?

The most striking detail in Bild’s report is not the election result, but the menu: “jellyfish strips” for 12 euros at Berlin’s Jolly restaurant. The newspaper highlighted the dish while reporting that former Chancellor Angela Merkel allegedly sat at a table for two there on the evening votes were counted in Saxony-Anhalt.

Bild contrasted Merkel’s dinner with the political turmoil nearby. While she ate at the restaurant, the newspaper wrote, crisis talks were taking place 4.8 kilometers away at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Friedrich Merz, Merkel’s successor as chancellor and CDU leader, was facing criticism from all sides over the party’s poor performance.

But what, exactly, was the report trying to say? Perhaps Merkel was enjoying herself while an unpopular party colleague struggled, turning the dinner into a kind of triumph meal. The commentary calls that an implication, rather than an explicit accusation.

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While Merkel sits at a Chinese restaurant in Berlin, crisis talks are being held 4.8 kilometers away at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.

Another reading is that Merkel should have lost her appetite after the AfD’s triumph. In a moment of political change, should she have been with her party instead of eating jellyfish strips or Peking duck? Even then, the commentary argues, she would first have had to quietly determine whether her presence would encourage Merz or make matters worse.

The final possibility concerns the restaurant itself. The article imagines the reaction: “Of all places, a Chinese restaurant!” China’s industrial overcapacity and assertive foreign policy are portrayed as threats to Germany’s economic and security stability. The commentary’s sarcastic advice is simple: next election night, Merkel should choose a traditional German restaurant, even if she eats the sauerbraten with chopsticks.

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Of all places, a Chinese restaurant!