Overview
- Speaking in Hamburg a day after the EU–Africa summit in Luanda, Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he searched the hotel buffet for “an orderly piece of bread” and “found none.”
- Merz made the comment during a bakery visit where he tasted loaves with baker Sören Korte and took bread from the oven alongside Hamburg mayor Peter Tschentscher.
- News reports and opinion pieces frame the remark as part of a recurring pattern of awkward post-trip statements about host locations.
- The episode follows Merz’s earlier description of Belém that many in Brazil found insulting, which prompted public criticism from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva before the two later made peace in Johannesburg.
- No formal rebuke from Angola is reported, with commentary instead focusing on the political optics and debates over German cultural self-image symbolized by “German bread.”