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“I think I have done my duty, and anyone who has not understood it now will not understand it for the next four years,” Merkel said at an event at the Schauspielhaus in Düsseldorf, standing next to Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adicje.
Merkel also declined to accept that she would be described as “the last defender of the free West,” saying she “should refrain from any exaggeration.”
“Fortunately, there are quite a few people who feel attached to democracy, and I’m certainly happy about that,” she added.
Parliamentary elections will take place in Germany on 26 September. Merkel, who has been chancellor for 16 years and has led the country in several crises, will not run for a fifth term.
Merkel and Adicje are considered icons of feminism, and at a theatrical event, journalists Mirjam Mekele and Lea Steincher discussed a “similarity of spirit between the two women.”
Merkel remembered how she grew up and what shaped her character. She said that she studied physics and 80% of the students were men, and that she had learned to fight for her place in a male-dominated environment.
Asked whether her refugee policy had divided German society, Merkel denied it. The chancellor also said that her famous saying “We can do it” was not an open invitation to refugees to go to Germany, as her critics claimed.
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