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The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is to be played out of office by a military band who will perform tunes chosen by him that are intended to sum up his mood and political life.
Scholz will bow out to the Beatles, Johann Sebastian Bach and an Otis Redding hit made famous by Aretha Franklin.
The 66-year-old will hand over office on Tuesday to Friedrich Merz, whose centre-right conservatives won Germany’s federal election in February, and who will lead a coalition with Scholz’s Social Democrats.
In a tradition going back to the 16th century, chancellors, presidents, defence ministers and military generals are given a farewell ceremony, and their chosen playlist always receives much scrutiny.
According to tradition, Scholz was allowed to request three pieces of music that will be performed by the band of the armed forces. On the programme is the Beatles’ In My Life, seen as a nod to his earlier political life when he was mayor of the northern port city of Hamburg between 2011 and 2018, where the Liverpool musicians cut their teeth in its clubs and bars in the 1960s.
Some commentators have suggested the song, the lyrics of which include the line “of all these friends and lovers, there is no one compares with you”, is also a tribute to his wife, the fellow politician Britta Ernst, to whom he has often expressed his affection and gratitude.
An excerpt from Bach’s second Brandenburg Concertos, his only classical choice, is a likely reference to the state of Brandenburg, where he lives and which he will continue to serve as a backbencher. He was the only Social Democrat to win a direct mandate in the former communist east, where the far-right Alternative für Deutschland more or less swept the board.
The song choice that has caused the most mirth is the feminist anthem Respect, made famous by Franklin, which alludes to a keyword of the election campaign that brought him to power in 2021, and which he has repeated often. Critics say he has not always lived up to the motto himself, having sometimes been gruff or appearing dismissive to journalists in particular.
Commentators have said Scholz’s musical choices offer a rare glimpse into the emotional side of the chancellor, who was often referred to as a “Scholzomat” due to his robotic-like responses, and whose old black leather briefcase became something of a TikTok star while he stayed in the background.
Referring to him as a “file carrier” in a farewell column, Franz Josef Wagner, a veteran columnist for the tabloid Bild, said Scholz’s inability to communicate had probably contributed to the brevity of his tenure as chancellor, which lasted just over three years. “Dear departing chancellor, if you had told us everything that went on in your heart, you would maybe still be chancellor today. But your mouth was sealed. You had a silent heart,” he wrote.
Scholz’s immediate predecessor Angela Merkel chose Nina Hagen’s 1974 hit You Forgot the Colour Film, a mix of nostalgia for holidays on the Baltic coast and a critique of grey life in communist Germany; the chanson Red Roses Should Rain for Me, a 1968 hit by the German actor Hildegard Knef; and Great God, We Praise You, a 17th-century ecumenical hymn.
Among the choices of her predecessor, the Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder, was Frank Sinatra’s My Way.
