BERLIN. Angela Merkel was robbed while she was shopping in a Berlin supermarket yesterday morning. According to German media, the former chancellor – who was accompanied by ‘at least’ one security officer from the Federal Criminal Office – went to a supermarket in the Morsestrasse of the Charlottenburg district and was “relieved” of her wallet.
According to Bild, this was inside Frau Merkel’s bag, hanging from the trolley. The police only confirmed that a 67-year-old lady reported a theft at the Friedrichstrasse police station. Her wallet contained her identity card, ATM card, driver’s license, and some cash. The former chancellor’s office limited itself to a ‘no comment’. The police have launched an investigation into “simple theft”. Given the well-known understatement of the former ‘girl from the east’, it is possible that the thief only realized who his victim was when he found her documents in his hands.
Images of Merkel grocery shopping were common throughout the long years of her chancellery, sometimes in a supermarket in the neighborhood that houses the Berlin power palaces, other times in the food department of a central French department store. Even during the first anti-Covid lockdown she had gone around the world with the photo of the chancellor standing in line with the trolley in front of the cash desk, holding the ATM card.