The former German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, is enjoying a curious political revival. Not so long ago, his reputation seemed in tatters. In light of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, many came to regard his longstanding ties to Russia and personal friendship with Vladimir Putin as self-serving. Fellow Social Democrats (SPD) tried to expel him from the party, and as recently as last year the government defunded the ex-chancellor’s office.
And yet a veritable Schröder nostalgia is now seeping into German political discourse, a phenomenon that’s less to do with a reappraisal of his chancellorship than with a desperate identity crisis on the centre-left.
