German Chancellor Olaf Scholz posted a picture of himself with an eye patch and bruising on his face to X, formerly known as Twitter—along with a call for memes— after a jogging incident led him to cancel some plans over the weekend.
This handout photo provided by the German government press office, Bundespresseamt, shows German ... [+]
In the photo posted to X, Scholz said he is “excited to see the memes” and added the injury “looks worse than it is!”
The chancellor’s spokesperson Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin on Monday that Scholz, 65, was “in quite a good mood this morning” though he still looks battered, and Hebestreit said they published the photo “so that everyone can get used to how he will look in the next week or two,” the Associated Press reported.
There were more than 5,000 responses to Scholz’s post just hours after he shared it to X, many of which were either well wishes for his recovery or edited photos of the chancellor as a pirate.
Scholz’s fall on Saturday led to him canceling appointments on Sunday, though his team has said appointments next week won't be impacted. Scholz has served as Germany’s chancellor since December 2021, and previously worked as the country's finance and labor minister and as mayor of Hamburg. He succeeded Angela Merkel when he took the country’s lead office in 2021 after she had been in office for 16 years. The Associated Press reported that the Hesse-based newspaper, the Frankfurter Rundschau, first broke the news of Scholz’s fall on Saturday.