The title of this essay was suggested by Hans Ley — 79 years old, engineer, Nuremberg, the person responsible for beyond-decay.org under press law. He himself pointed out that this title might earn him a morning visit from the Nuremberg criminal police. In Germany that cannot be ruled out. What ought to be ruled out — but is not — is that the same logic of prosecution that could hold a 79-year-old engineer to account for a title that is a quotation should be applied to the political class that provoked the title as a description of its own behaviour. The title is a quotation. The scene is reality.
On Friday, 11 April 2026, people close to Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz let it be known that he was “disconcerted by the public exchange of blows” between Economy Minister Katherina Reiche and the SPD. Reiche had been urged to show restraint. The question of whether she was about to be thrown out was thereby officially on the table.
On Monday, 13 April 2026, Merz addressed Reiche at the CDU federal executive: “The applause for you shows the full support you have from all of us.” The leader of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Jens Spahn, praised her for “important, correct impulses.”
Between Friday and Monday lay 72 hours, a coalition committee meeting that ran into the night, and an agreement to cut the energy tax. The question of whether Reiche is about to be thrown out is no longer on the table. The ranks are closed tight.
What actually happened in those 72 hours
Reiche had publicly attacked Klingbeil and had stayed away from a summit he organised. That is not a breach of style — it is a coalition breaking up in slow motion, performed in front of the cameras, with no regard for how the government looks in an acute crisis. At their peak, fuel prices were around 70 cents per litre above pre-war levels. The country was waiting for answers. The Economy Minister delivered a coalition row.
Merz’s reaction was therefore not wrong — it was objectively called for. Anyone leading a government cannot tolerate a minister publicly dismantling the coalition partner while a crisis is under way. The “disconcertment” was not a stylistic device. It was a clear message.
Then the CDU federal executive met. Reiche received long applause. The economically liberal wing of the Union, which had praised her for her confrontation with the SPD, was in the room. Merz, who in the matter of Reiche versus Klingbeil structurally stands on Reiche’s side — tax cuts yes, windfall tax no, less state more market — had done 72 hours earlier what chancellors have to do: keep up appearances. Now he did what party leaders have to do: serve the base.
The full support Reiche received on Monday was not for her behaviour. It was for her position. The difference is decisive — and is consistently blurred in the reporting.
The spectacle of unity
What was performed in Berlin on Monday is a well-rehearsed genre of German coalition politics: the performative closing of ranks after a conflict fought out in public. The pattern has four acts.
Act one: a conflict breaks out, becomes public, damages the image of the government. Act two: the leadership urges restraint — publicly, so that the signal is sent. Act three: an agreement is reached, in substance somewhere between the positions. Act four: the ranks close, applause, declarations of solidarity, “important, correct impulses.”
The conflict is not resolved by this. It is postponed. Reiche still stands for one line, Klingbeil for another. The geometry of the coalition has not been altered by the applause in the CDU executive. What has been altered is the public image — and that is the point. Coalition politics in a crisis is to a considerable extent image politics. The ability to show unity where there is none is one of the core skills of governing.
This is neither new nor specific to this coalition. It is the normal functioning of a system of government that knows coalitions as its standard form. What is strange is not the procedure. What is strange is the openness with which it is conducted — as if the actors no longer expected anyone to look back from Monday to Friday and name the difference.
What the agreement actually decided
A tax cut of 17 cents on petrol and diesel, limited to two months. 1.6 billion euros of relief. Financed by raising tobacco tax — that is, by a tax that disproportionately hits lower income groups, who disproportionately smoke.
The hope of a windfall tax on the oil industry was formulated as a “request to the EU Commission to examine the matter”. That is political Esperanto for: probably nothing will happen, but we had to say something.
Merz expects the oil industry to pass on the relief. That is the same formulation used in 2022 for the fuel discount. Back then the fuel discount let the oil industry earn around 1.4 billion euros extra, because the companies partly kept the tax cut instead of passing it on. The competition authority documented this. Nothing was learned from it — structurally — because a binding obligation to pass it on is legally difficult and was not politically wanted.
Two months of tax cuts in response to a crisis triggered by the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and lasting until that blockade ends — that is treating symptoms without a diagnosis. The oil price does not depend on German energy tax. It depends on geopolitical developments entirely beyond the federal government’s control.
What Merz meant when he said: this is only the beginning
“This is only the beginning,” said Merz. He meant the reform talks. “Confidence and a good mood” were the goal. “That those who achieve a great deal are respected and recognised” — and those, he said, were “the majority.”
That is a remarkably empty statement measured against the situation: a war in the Middle East has destabilised Europe’s energy supply, fuel prices are at historic highs, the coalition has quarrelled in public for three days, and the answer is a tax cut limited to two months, financed by tobacco tax, with the wish that the oil industry will be nice.
Confidence as a political goal is legitimate. Confidence as a substitute for substance is government theatre. The question Merz did not answer — because it has no simple answer — is: what will the federal government do if the oil price rises again in three months because the Strait of Hormuz is still blockaded or is blockaded again? Energy tax cannot be cut indefinitely. Tobacco tax cannot be raised indefinitely.
The coalition has presented no structural answers to structural crises. What it has presented is performative unity after a public quarrel, a time-limited measure of uncertain effect, and a chancellor who promises “confidence”.
The ranks are closed tight. What stands behind them is another question.