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To mark the anniversary of the start of the construction of the Berlin Wall on August 13, 1961, Angela Merkel filled in as history teacher at the Heinrich-Schliemann secondary school in East Berlin.
The school had won a competition organised by the youth magazine Spiesser, which asked students to designate an ideal replacement for their teacher.
In her class, the chancellor talked about the fall of the Wall in what government spokesman Georg Streiter described as a bid to “raise students’ awareness of the democratic tradition and freedom in Germany”.
With the launch of campaigns in the run-up to general elections on September 22, the Chancellor, who is usually reluctant to expose her private life, has begun to seek attention from the media. Die Welt remarks that —
Merkel is much more strict about the use of her image than any of her predecessors.
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