Angela Merkel's speech in wording

My fellow citizens,

the coronavirus is currently changing life in our country dramatically. Our ideas of normality, of public life, of social interaction - all of these are being put to the test like never before.

Millions of you can't go to work, your children can't go to school or go to daycare, theatres and cinemas and shops are closed, and, perhaps the hardest thing, we all miss the encounters that are otherwise taken for granted. Of course, in such a situation, each of us is full of questions and worries about how to go on.

I turn to you today on this unusual path because I want to tell you what guides me as Chancellor and all my colleagues in the Federal Government in this situation. This is part and parcel of an open democracy: that we also make political decisions transparent and explain them. That we justify and communicate our actions as well as possible so that they are comprehensible.

I firmly believe that we will succeed in this task if really all citizens see it as YOUR task.

So let me say that this is serious. Take it seriously too. Since German reunification, no, since the Second World War, there has not been a challenge to our country that depends so much on our joint solidarity.

I would like to explain to you where we currently stand in the epidemic, what the Federal Government and the levels of government are doing to protect everyone in our community and limit the economic, social and cultural damage. But I would also like to explain to you why you are needed for this and what each and every one of you can contribute.

As far as the epidemic is concerned - and everything I am telling you about it comes from the Federal Government's ongoing consultations with the experts of the Robert Koch Institute and other scientists and virologists: research is being carried out under high pressure all over the world, but there is still neither a therapy against the coronavirus nor a vaccine.

As long as this is the case, there is only one thing we can do, and that is to slow down the spread of the virus, stretch it over the months and thus gain time. Time for research to develop a drug and a vaccine. But above all time so that those who fall ill can receive the best possible care.

Germany has an excellent healthcare system, perhaps one of the best in the world. That can give us confidence. But our hospitals would also be completely overwhelmed if too many patients who suffer a severe course of corona infection were admitted in the shortest possible time.

These are not just abstract numbers in a statistic, but that is a father or grandfather, a mother or grandmother, a partner, they are people. And we are a community in which every life and every person counts.

I would like to take this opportunity to address first and foremost all those who work as doctors, in the nursing service or in any other function in our hospitals and in the health care system in general. They are at the forefront of this struggle. They are the first to see the sick and how severe some courses of infection are. And every day you go back to your work and are there for the people. What you do is tremendous, and I thank you for it with all my heart.

So: the aim is to slow down the virus on its way through Germany. And in doing so, we have to rely on one thing, which is existential: to shut down public life as far as possible. Of course, with reason and a sense of proportion, because the state will continue to function, the supply will of course continue to be secured and we want to preserve as much economic activity as possible.

But everything that could endanger people, everything that could harm the individual, but also the community, we must reduce that now.

We must limit the risk of one infecting the other as much as we can.

I know how dramatic the restrictions are already: no more events, no more fairs, no more concerts and, for the time being, no more school, no university, no kindergarten, no playing in a playground. I know how hard the closures, which have been agreed upon by the federal and state governments, interfere with our lives and also with our democratic self-image. They are restrictions such as have never been seen before in the Federal Republic.

Let me assure you: For someone like me, for whom freedom of travel and movement was a hard-won right, such restrictions can only be justified as an absolute necessity. In a democracy, they should never be decided lightly and only temporarily - but at the moment they are indispensable to save lives.