Noted German philospher Jürgen Habermas has taken direct aim at Angela Merkel this week over her recent handling of the “Greek issue”, charging that she is   “gambling away” the efforts of previous generations to rebuild the country’s postwar .

According to the Guardian, the well-known German intellectual charged that the German chancellor had effectively carried out “an act of punishment” against the left-wing government of Alexis Tsipras.

“I fear that the German government, including its social democratic faction, have gambled away in one night all the political capital that a better Germany had accumulated in half a century,” he told the Guardian. Previous German governments, he said, had displayed “greater political sensitivity and a post-national mentality”.