Angela Dorothea Merkel
Chancellor of The Federal Republic of Germany
ANGELA DOROTHEA MERKEL (nee Kasner) was born on the 17th of July 1954 in Hamburg, West Germany.
In 2005, she became the first female chancellor of Germany. While studying physics at Karl Marx University, Leipzig, she met her first husband Urich Merkel and they got married in 1977. After earning her diploma in 1978, she worked as a member of the academic faculty at the Central Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin.
In 1982 Merkel and her husband divorced, but she kept his last name.
She was awarded a doctorate for her thesis on quantum chemistry in 1986.
As was the case for most children growing up in the German Democratic Republic, Merkel participated in the state’s youth organizations. She was a member of the Young Pioneers (from 1962) and the Free German Youth (from 1968).
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Merkel joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) political party. Soon after, she was appointed to Helmut Kohl's cabinet as minister for women and youth, and later she served as minister for the environment and nuclear safety. Following Kohl's defeat in the 1998 general election, she was named secretary-general of the CDU. In 2000, Merkel was chosen party leader, but she lost the CDU candidacy for chancellor to Edmund Stoiber in 2002.
In the 2005 election, Merkel narrowly defeated Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, winning by just three seats, and after the CDU agreed a coalition deal with the Social Democrats (SPD), she was declared Germany's first female chancellor. Merkel also became the first former citizen of the German Democratic Republic to lead the reunited Germany and the first woman to lead Germany since it became a modern nation-state in 1871. She was elected to a second term in 2009.
Merkel made headlines in October 2013 when she accused the U.S. National Security Agency of tapping her cell phone. At a summit of European leaders she chided the United States for this privacy breach, saying that "Spying among friends is never acceptable." Shortly afterward, in December 2013, she was sworn in for a third term.
Angela Merkel was reelected for a fourth term as chancellor in September 2017. However, although her CDU party held its majority in the Bundestag, the national parliament, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 13 percent of the vote to become the third-largest group in parliament, after the CDU/CSU and SPD. It was the first time a far-right party had entered the Bundestag since 1961.
“We expected a better result, that is clear,” Merkel said following the election. “The good thing is that we will definitely lead the next government.” She also said she would address supporters of the AfD “by solving problems, by taking up their worries, partly also their fears, but above all by good politics.”
Despite the challenge to her authority in the September election, Merkel topped Forbes' list of the most powerful women in the world for the seventh consecutive year in 2017, and for the 12th time overall.
Additional problems surfaced in mid-November, when attempts to form a new government coalition collapsed. Following weeks of negotiations, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) suddenly pulled out of talks with the CDU/CSU and the Greens, over differences regarding immigration and other policies. The rejection marked another blow to Merkel, who said that her party would "continue to take responsibility for this country, even in such a difficult situation."
The struggling European economy continued to loom large as Merkel entered her third term—the prospect of a Greek exit from the euro zone was a recurring concern—but it was soon eclipsed by a pair of security challenges on the frontiers of the European Union (EU). A pro-Western protest movement in Ukraine drove pro-Russian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych from office in February 2014, and Russia responded by forcibly annexing the Ukrainian autonomous republic of Crimea. As pro-Russian gunmen seized territory in eastern Ukraine, Merkel joined other Western leaders in accusing Russia of directly fomenting the conflict. She spearheaded EU efforts to enact sanctions against Russia and participated in numerous multiparty discussions in an effort to restore peace to the region. Merkel was also faced with Europe’s gravest refugee crisis since World War II when hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere flocked to the EU. Although she maintained that Germany would keep its borders open in the face of the humanitarian emergency, Merkel temporarily suspended the Schengen Agreement and reintroduced border controls with Austria in September 2015.
More than one million migrants entered Germany in 2015, and Merkel’s party paid a steep political price for her stance on refugees. As the backlash against migrants manifested itself in street protests and at the ballot box, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland; AfD) was among the parties to capitalize on the rising tide of populism and xenophobia in Europe. In September 2016 the AfD placed second—ahead of the CDU—in regional elections in Merkel’s home state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Two weeks later the CDU was ousted from the local governing coalition in Berlin when it posted its worst-ever electoral performance in the capital. Elsewhere, appeals to nationalism had fueled the successful “yes” campaign in the U.K. 's Brexit referendum (June 2016) and propelled Donald Trump to victory in the U.S. presidential election (November 2016), but Merkel continued to tack toward the centre as she announced that she would seek a fourth term.
In March 2018, the SPD voted to renew its coalition with the CDU, clearing the path for Merkel to finally move forward with her fourth term. Talks had stalled between the parties, though the gridlock eased after SPD leader Martin Schulz stepped down in February.
That summer, Merkel again had to walk a political tightrope when facing an ultimatum from Horst Seehofer, her interior minister and the leader of Bavaria's Christian Social Union. Seehofer had threatened to quit over Merkel's refusal to deny entry to migrants with asylum claims pending elsewhere in the European Union, but in early July the two announced they had agreed to a compromise, in which transit centers would be established on the border with Austria to route asylum seekers to their responsible countries.
In October 2018, Merkel announced that she planned to step aside as chair of the CDU at the end of the year and would not run for reelection as chancellor in 2021. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer subsequently took over leadership of the CDU, a move seen as an endorsement of Merkel's legacy, until Kramp-Karrenbauer's surprise resignation in February 2020 clouded the picture for the chancellor's final months in office.
Merkel’s style of government has been characterized by pragmatism, although critics have decried her approach as the absence of a clear stance and ideology. She demonstrated her willingness to adopt the positions of her political opponents if they proved to be sensible and popular. One notable example of that was Merkel’s decision to phase out nuclear power in the wake of the Fukushima accident in 2011 after having passed a law to prolong the operating life of Germany’s nuclear power plants only two years earlier. Merkel’s handling of the euro-zone debt crisis, on the other hand, led to criticism of an approach many considered too strict. Indeed, even the broadly pro-austerity International Monetary Fund director, Christine Lagarde, drew attention to the harm that harsh austerity measures could inflict on an already-damaged economy. In spite of those challenges, the leader of Europe’s most populous and economically powerful country continued to enjoy strong domestic approval numbers.
It is noteworthy that Merkel during her years in service witnessed changes in several governments; 7 Italian Prime Ministers, 5 British Prime Ministers, 4 French Presidents, 4 American Presidents and 3 Nigerian Presidents, among other world leaders.
In 2011 Merkel was awarded the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. She has been awarded some honorary degrees among which include: an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2007, an honorary doctorate from Leipzig University, 2008, an honorary degree in law by Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2019 and Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa from Johns Hopkins University in 2021. Also in 2021, Merkel received the Harnack Medal, which is the highest award of the Max Planck Society, one of the world's most prestigious research organisations.
Sources: Business Insider, Forbes, Britannica, Biography.
