Martin Walser on why he finds Angela Merkel beautiful

Now aged 91, Martin Walser still sees writing as his "food." "Writing replaced talking early on in my life. Writing is the only thing that I do without having to do it," the author said at the launch of his latest book, Spätdienst (Late Night Service) at the Literaturhaus in Stuttgart.

Walser described it as a book "without a plot and without genre" that offered "a literary account of his life."

'Seduced by Angela Merkel'

In his recent essay in the news weekly Der Spiegel, Walser wrote about the beauty of Chancellor Angela Merkel, with the headline of his article claiming that "he was seduced by her."

He explained at the discussion that he found her "beautiful" because she does not talk like other politicians who simply learn their sentences by heart and always know what they will answer ahead of a question. "That makes their faces so miserable," said Walser, while Merkel, in contrast, "keeps things exciting for the audience."

That's what led him to write the essay on "Angela Merkel's quiet impact." "The way she gradually develops her thoughts as she speaks, that's pure Mrs. Merkel."

A polarizing intellectual

At the presentation, the author reflected on the burden of memories, revealing that the topic was at the center of his next book. "It would be nice if you could erase everything," he said. "I'm against having to endure all memories. The more beautiful something was in the past, the worse it is now."

His statements at the book launch remained tame, but Walser is also known for his past controversial statements on the topic of historical memory.

While he was involved in leftist politics earlier in his life, his acceptance speech at the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade in 1998 clearly positioned him as a rightist thinker.

Referring to Auschwitz and Germany's culture of remembrance, he said that "something inside me is opposing this permanent show of our shame."

He had also criticized the Holocaust Memorial that was being planned for Berlin at the time: "Turning the center of the capital into concrete with a nightmare, the size of a football pitch. Turning shame into monument," he said in his speech that led to a national controversy. 

Walser however praised the monument once it was completed.

DW's web project 100 German Must-Reads has more on the polarizing author and presents one of his major works from the 1970s, Runaway Horse. 

Despite the controversy, the author remains a strong voice in Germany's media landscape. In 2016, he was ranked first on a top 500 list of the "most important German intellectuals" by political magazine Cicero. The ranking is determined by the authors' presence in the country's newspapers and how often they are quoted on the internet and in scholar articles.