Angela Merkel’s election to head the federal government makes history
A few weeks after her birth in Hamburg, West Germany, in 1954, Angela Kasner moved with her mother and father – a school teacher and a Lutheran pastor – to East Germany, where her father sought to minister to a congregation in rural Brandenburg. Angela went to school in small-town Templin and went on to study physics at university. After marrying a fellow student, she took the surname Merkel. Angela Merkel undertook a doctorate in physics and worked at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the DDR. She was not a member of the ruling SED or any other East German political party, nor was she active in the opposition. Following her divorce, she met quantum chemist Joachim Sauer in East Berlin, whom she married 15 years later. Merkel turned to politics only after the DDR began to collapse. She quickly rose through the ranks and attained a position in the first democratically elected government of the DDR. In reunified Germany, she took up a seat in the Bundestag for the CDU; in 1991, she was appointed Federal Minister for Women and Youth by Chancellor Kohl; in 1994, she was given the portfolio for Environment, Nature Conservation and Reactor Safety. In 1998, she became secretary-general of the CDU; 2000 saw her elected to lead the party. As the candidate of her party in the 2005 federal elections, she won a narrow victory.
Angela Merkel was elected Chancellor on 22 November 2005, becoming the first woman to hold Germany’s highest government office. She held the position for 16 years, winning three more federal elections in the process. Benefitting from the reforms of the previous government, she was able to campaign for herself and her party with the slogan: “You know me.” Under her leadership, the CDU moved to the centre, a strategy that drew criticism, as it opened up space on the right for more extreme positions. Merkel’s term in office saw several crises and upheavals: the financial crisis of 2008/09; the suspension of compulsory military service in 2011; the nuclear phase-out from 2011; the refugee crisis of 2015/16; and the COVID-19 pandemic. Merkel’s actions were not always uncontroversial in Germany, and her policy on Russia was also viewed critically by some neighbouring countries. Nevertheless, she enjoyed great international prestige: Angela Merkel was ranked as the most powerful woman in the world and was at times characterized by the US media as the second most powerful person in the world, or even the “Chancellor of the Free World” – no other woman has ever achieved such a high position.
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