Angela Merkel

At 69 years old, Angela Merkel has this physical status:

Angela Dorothea Merkel (born 17 July 1954) is a German politician who has served as Germany's chancellor since 2005.

She served as the head of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 2000 to 2018.

Merkel has been widely regarded as the de facto head of the European Union, the world's most influential woman, and "leader of the free world" since her father, a Lutheran clergyman, received a priestate in Perleberg.

She earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989.

Merkel briefly served as a spokesperson for the first democratically elected East German government led by Lothar de Maizière in 1990.

Merkel was elected to the Bundestag for Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1990, and the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has been reelected ever since.

Background and early life

Angela Dorothea Kasner, a born in Berlin, West Germany, was born Angela Dooster in 1954 (née Kamierczak), a Lutheran pastor and a Berliner, and his wife Herlind (1928-2019), a teacher of English and Latin, born in Danzig (now Gdask, Poland). Marcus Kasner, a physicist, and Irene Kasner, an occupational therapist, are two of her younger siblings. Merkel was identified by the term "Kasi" in her childhood and youth, which came from her last name Kasner.

Merkel is of German and Polish descent. Ludwik Kasner, her paternal grandfather of Polish origins, was a German policeman of Polish descent who had participated in Poland's fight for independence in the early 20th century. Margarethe, a Berliner from Berlin, and her grandmother Margarethe moved to her hometown, where he worked in the police. They changed the Polish word Kaasieczak to Kasner in 1930. Willi Jentzsch and Gertrud Alma (née Drange), a daughter of Elbing's city clerk and now Elbl, Poland), were among Merkel's maternal grandparents (now Elbl, Poland). Emil Drange Merkel has often mentioned her Polish roots and referred to herself as a quarter Polish in the mid-1990s, but her Polish roots are now more well known as a result of a 2013 biography.

The Kasner family's migration from West Germany to East Germany was mainly influenced by faith. Merkel's paternal grandfather was originally Catholic, but the entire family converted to Lutheranism during her father's childhood, who later studied Lutheran theology in Heidelberg and Hamburg. Angela's father was awarded a pastorate at the church in Quitzow, which was then in East Germany, in 1954, when she was only three months old. The family migrated to Templin and Merkel, who live 90 kilometers (56 miles) north of East Berlin.

Merkel joined the Free German Youth (FDJ), the formal communist youth movement run by Germany's ruling Marxist-Leninist Socialist Union Party. While membership was nominally free, those that did not register found it difficult to obtain higher education. She did not attend the secular coming of age celebrations in East Germany, but that was normal. Rather, she was announced. During this time, she took part in several compulsory courses on Marxism-Leninism, but her grades were only considered "acceptable." "Life in the GDR was often enjoyable in a certain way because there were certain things one simply couldn't influence," Merkel said later.

Retired life and legacy

She told the DPA news agency on February 25th, only 24 hours after Russia's invasion of Ukraine began, "condemned in the best terms [...] the war of aggression led by Russia" marked a significant change in the history of post-Cold War Europe.

When she had opposed Ukraine's membership in the North Atlantic Alliance, she wrote in April that she "stood by her position at the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008."

Merkel made her first semi-public remarks on political affairs after leaving office on June 1st, 2022, at a retirement party for Reiner Hoffmann, president of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB). "I cannot make this address without mentioning Russia's flagrant violation of international law." "My sympathy is with Ukraine, which has been attacked and invaded by Russia," she said of "the efforts of the Federal Republic of Germany, the European Union, and the US to put an end to this barbaric war led by Russia... The latest events have shown that peace and liberty are not taken seriously. The great idea of Europe as a group based on values and the protection of peace is on display.

Merkel made her first public appearance on June 7, 2022. In a Berlin theatre interview with Der Spiegel journalist Alexander Osang, she defended her Ukraine's legacy and called the Putinian war "not only unacceptable but also a major mistake from Russia." It's a laudable violation of all international rules and everything that allows us in Europe to live in peace at all. We'll have war if we go back through the centuries and start arguing about which part of the country should belong to whom. It is not an option." She also stated that by the time of her chancellorship in September 2021, it was clear that Putin was heading in the direction of war and that the Normandy style talks were done.

Personal life

Ulrich Merkel, then-Angel Kasner, married physics student Ulrich Merkel (born 1953) and took his surname. In 1982, the marriage ended in divorce. Joachim Sauer, a quantum chemist and researcher who has largely remained out of the media spotlight, is her second and current husband. They first met in 1981, became a couple later and married privately on December 30, 1998. Sauer does not have children, but she does have two adult sons from her previous marriage.

Merkel learned Russian at school, not English, growing up in East Germany. She was able to speak directly to Vladimir Putin in Russian but she held diplomatic talks through an interpreter. She rarely spoke English in public, but she gave a small portion of an address to the British parliament in English in 2014.

Merkel has devotedly supported football, and has been known to watch games while in the Bundestag and watch games of the national team's national team play, as well as Germany's 1–0 victory over Argentina in the 2014 World Cup Final. Merkel said that her favorite film is The Legend of Paul and Paula, an East German film that was released in 1973, is The Legend of Paul and Paula.

Since being targeted by one in 1995, Merkel has a fear of dogs. During a press conference in 2007, Vladimir Putin brought in his Labrador Retriever. Putin claims he did not mean to alarm her, but Merkel later stated, "I know why he has to do this – to show he's a man." ... He's afraid of his own vulnerability."

Since 2017, Merkel has been seen and filmed to shaky on several public occasions, resurrecting shortly afterwards. Following one such occurrence, she attributed the shaking to dehydration, and she said she felt better after a glass of water. She began to sit down during the national anthem performances during Mette Frederiksen and Maia Sandu's visits in June 2019.

Merkel said she was a feminist in September 2021, after years of evading the issue. The address was made in a conference with Nigerian writer and feminist icon Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Angela Merkel is a member of the Evangelical Church in Berlin, Brandenburg, and Silesian Upper Lusatia (German: Evangelische Kirche Berlin-Brandenburg-Schlesische Oberlausitz – EKBO), a United Protestant (i.e. Both Reformed and Lutheran (EGD) church bodies are part of the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD). The EKBO is a congregation of the Union of Evangelical Churches. She belonged to the former before the 2004 merger of the Evangelical Church in Berlin-Brandenburg and the Evangelical Church in Silesian Upper Lusatia (both being members of the EKD). Merkel said in 2012 that she is a member of the evangelical church. I believe in God and faith, and have been with me for the entirety of my life. We should not be afraid of speaking out in support of our convictions, as Christians should not be afraid of standing up for our faith." She has also stated that Germany does not suffer from "too much Islam" but "too little Christianity."

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Education and scientific career

Merkel learned to speak Russian fluently at school and was given awards for her achievements in Russian and mathematics. She was the best in her class in mathematics and Russian and finished her schooling with the highest possible Abitur grade 1.0.

Merkel continued her education at Karl Marx University, Leipzig, where she studied physics from 1973 to 1978. As a student, she was involved in the reconstruction of Moritzbastei's ruin. A project student group was founded on campus to create their own club and recreation center. Such an initiative was unprecedented in the GDR of the time, and the university had initially resisted, but the university had resisted. The initiative was allowed to begin with the SED party's local leadership.

Merkel wanted an assistant professorship at an engineering school near the end of her studies. Merkel was told she would have to notify her colleagues to police of the Ministry of State Security as a condition for getting the job (Stasi). Merkel denied, citing the fact that she could not keep secrets well enough to be a good spy.

Merkel worked and studied at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Adlershof from 1978 to 1990. In Mitte, she and her husband squatted first. She became a member of the Academy of Sciences' FDJ clandestinariat. She openly promoted Marxism as the secretary in charge of "Affair and Propaganda," according to her former colleagues. Merkel, on the other hand, denied this assertion, stating that she was secretary for culture, which involved activities such as buying theatre tickets and arranging talks with visiting Soviet authors. "I can only rely on my memory," she said, "I can only rely on my memory, if something turns out to be different."

After being awarded a doctorate (Dr. rer), I was rewarded with a doctorate. (nat.) She worked as a researcher and authored many papers for her PhD thesis on quantum chemistry in 1986. She was able to travel to West Germany in 1986 to attend a congress; later, she was part of a multi-week language course in Donetsk, Ukraine's then-Russian Soviet Socialist Republic.

Early political career

Merkel's political career was triggered by the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Despite the fact that she did not attend the crowd celebrations the night the wall fell, one month later, Merkel became involved in the burgeoning democracy movement, joining the new party Demokratischer Aufbruch (DA, or in English "Democratic Beginning"). In February 1990, party leader Wolfgang Schnur appointed her as the party's press spokeswoman. Schnur, on the other hand, was revealed to have served as a "inward co-worker" for the Stasi just a few weeks before the first (and only) multi-party election in 1990, and was later barred from the party. As a result, the DA sank, with four members only winning four seats in the Volkskammer. However, the DA, as a member of the Alliance for Germany, which lost the election in a landslide, was included in the government coalition. Merkel was then named deputy spokesperson of the new and last pre-unification government under Lothar de Maizière.

Merkel had a great time de Maizière by her ability in dealing with journalists probing Schnur's presence in the Stasi. Following reunification, the DA joined the East German Christian Democratic Union in April 1990, which in turn merged with its western counterpart.

Merkel won the German federal election of 1990, the first to be held after reunification, in Stralsund's parliamentary constituency – Nordvorpommern – Rügen, north Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Günther Krause, the then-influential CDU minister and state party chairman, received the coveted support of the woman. At the seven federal elections held since then, she has won re-election from this constituency (renamed, with slightly altered boundaries, Vorpommern-Greifswald I in 2003). Almost immediately following her entrée in parliament, Merkel was nominated by Chancellor Helmut Kohl to serve as Minister for Women and Youth in the federal cabinet. The ministry was the youngest and least effective of the three ministries that were developed from the old Ministry of Health, Senior citizens, Family and Youth.

Merkel, who had the support of the federal CDU in November 1991, ran for the head of the neighboring CDU in Brandenburg. She lost to Ulf Finke in the first election to date; she has lost the only election to date.

Merkel became the head of the CDU in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in June 1993, replacing her former mentor Günther Krause.

She was promoted to the position of Minister for Environment and Nuclear Safety in 1994, giving her more political prominence and a platform on which to develop her personal political career. She was often referred to by Kohl as "my girl" by Kohl as one of Kohl's protégées and his youngest Cabinet Minister.

Merkel was named CDU Secretary-General after the Kohl Government was defeated at the 1998 election, a key position in the coalition's post, since the party was no longer a member of the federal government. In 1999, Merkel led to a string of victories in six out of seven state elections, ending the long-serving SPD-Green bloc's grip on the Bundesrat. Following a party funding fiasco that damaged several key figures of the CDU, including Kohl himself and his replacement as CDU Leader Wolfgang Schäuble, Merkel sluggishly criticized her former mentor and urged the party to get off the ground without him.

On April 10, 2000, she was elected to replace Schäuble, becoming the first female head of a German party. Many observers were taken aback by her election; Merkel, a centrist Protestant originating from predominantly Protestant northern Germany, is a male-dominated, sociologically conservative party with strongholds in western and southern Germany; the CSU, along with its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, has deep Catholic roots.

The CDU was not able to win in subsequent state elections following Merkel's ascension as CDU Leader. Since February 2001, her rival Friedrich Merz had made it clear that he intends to be Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's biggest challenger in the 2002 election. Merkel's aspirations to become Chancellor were well-known, but she did not have the support of most Minister-presidents and other influential figures within her own party. She was then outmaneuvered politically by CSU Leader Edmund Stoiber, to whom she eventually forfeited the privilege of opposing Schröder. In an election campaign dominated by the Iraq War, he squander a substantial lead in opinion polls to lose the election by a razor-thin margin. Although Chancellor Schröder made it clear that he would not participate in Iraq, Merkel and the CDU-CSU supported the invasion of Iraq.

Following Stoiber's demise in 2002, Merkel assumed the Opposition Leader in the Bundestag, rather than her duties as CDU Leader; before the 2002 election, Friedrich Merz, who had been in charge of the Opposition, was pushed out to make way for Merkel. Stoiber voted for Merkel.

Merkel supported a significant change agenda for Germany's economic and social structure, and was deemed more pro-market than her own party (the CDU). She advocated for reforms in German labour law, including removing barriers to layoff employees and increasing the number of working hours per week. Because employers cannot easily monitor labor costs when production is slow, she argued that existing regulations made the country less competitive.

Merkel argued that Germany could gradually phase out nuclear service as the Schröder administration had expected.

Merkel advocated for a strong transatlantic cooperation and German-American cooperation. Merkel came out in favour of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, calling it "unavoidable" and accusing Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of anti-Americanism in the spring of 2003. She sluggishly condemned the government's support for Turkey's accession to the European Union and favoured a "privileged relationship" instead. She reflected public opinion that the Turkish Union's membership in the European Union has risen more hostile.

Merkel defeated the CDU/CSU nomination in 2005 as the opposition to SPD President Gerhard Schröder in the national elections. In national opinion polls, her party led by 21 points over the SPD, but her personal profile fell behind that of the incumbent. However, during a live broadcast discussion, Merkel, who made economic expertise central to the CDU's platform, mistook gross and net income twice. After she declared that she would appoint Paul Kirchhof, a former judge on the German Constitutional Court and leading fiscal policy specialist, as Minister of Finance, she regained some energy.

Merkel and the CDU lost ground after Kirchhof suggested the introduction of a flat tax in Germany, undermining the party's broad appeal in economic affairs and persuading many voters that the CDU's deregulation platform was supposed to benefit only the wealthy. Merkel's plan to raise VAT to eliminate Germany's deficit and fill the void in income from a flat tax was compounded. SPD were able to raise their funds by promising not to introduce flat taxes or increase VAT. Although Merkel's standing soared after she distanced herself from Kirchhof's plans, she remained much less popular than Schröder, and the CDU's lead fell to 9% on the eve of the election.

Based on opinion polls, Merkel was still favourite to win a decisive victory on the eve of the election. Merkel's CDU/CSU and Schröder's SPD went head-to-head in the national elections on September 18, 2005, with the CDU/CSU winning 35.2% (CSU 27.8%/CSU 7.5%) of the second votes to the SPD's 34.2%. Both Schröder and Merkel won, but they were so close. Neither the SPD-Green coalition nor the CDU/CSU and its allies, the Free Democratic Party, nor the SPD-Green Party, nor the CDU/CSU and the CP's favored coalition allies, nor the Free Democratic Party, nor the SPD-Green coalition nor the CDU/CSU nor the CDU/CSU nor the CDU/CSU and its allies, the Free Democratic Party, nor the CDU/CSU nor the CDU/CSU and its a a a majority in the SPD nor the SPD nor the SPD nor the CSU and the CDU/CSU, nor the Free Democratic Party, nor the CDU/CSU and its CP, nor the CSU, nor the CDU/CSU nor the Free Democratic Party, nor the CDU/CSU and the Social Democratic Party, nor the CSU and the CSU nor the CDU/CSU and the CDU/CSU and the partisan Alliance of the et partisan alliance of the adacSU nor its acSU nor the armed coalition allies, had enough seats to form acSU and its e or the wing and the Free Democratic Party and the CDU/CSU nor the CDU/CSU nor the SPD nor the Conservative Party and the Free Democratic Party or its allies, nor the SPD-Greens or the FDP and the partisan coalition or its key coalition allies of the Free Democrats, nor the ethocaustria'siundiadoacdu edovowed adoadovowed aziadovowed e adodu/CSU and its edo's, nor the CDU/CSU and its allies, nor the CDU/CSU and its eaaiaiadist eda. The CDU/CSU and SPD formed a grand alliance, but both groups faced the opposition that both sides demanded the chancellorship. However, after three weeks of talks, the two sides have signed a deal in which Merkel will become Chancellor and the SPD will hold 8 of the cabinet's eight seats.

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