This still shapes the Foreign Minister today Baerbock's sad family secret
It is a tragedy that happened 14 years before she was born - and yet still affects Germany's foreign minister to this day.
In the “Bunten” newspaper, Annalena Baerbock (42, Green Party) spoke about the tragic accidental death of her then 12-year-old aunt Erika, daughter of her beloved grandmother Alma Choroba (1926-2015).
The drama that shook the family took place twelve days before Christmas near Hanover in 1966. Little Erika goes into town alone and wants to buy a set square. To protect herself from the weather, she pulls an umbrella close to her face. Erika misses a tram and is run over - accidental death!
Alma goes to the child therapist with sister Sylvia, Baerbock's future mother. They talk about their sister's accident and deal with Erika's death as best they can.
Baerbock's grandfather didn't find this strength. He fell apart over the loss of his little daughter and withdrew in the twilight of his life.
Baerbock's grandmother Alma accompanied her granddaughter until her death in 2015. Annalena still carries her grandmother's stories about her experiences in the war and on the run with her today.
To this day, she is the powerful Green politician's biggest role model and is herself the mother of two daughters. “Despite incredible blows of fate, my grandmother was an incredibly proud, self-confident and, above all, life-affirming woman,” she revealed to “Bunten”.
Because her life path was tragic from an early age: born in 1926 in the former Beuthen (today Upper Silesia, Poland), she married young. But her first husband, Viktor Jung, was killed in the Battle of Königsberg (today Kaliningrad, Russia) in the final months of the war in 1945.
This drama also motivates Baerbock to work for peace in the world today.
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