“Angela Merkel.” The words on the lips of every diplomat in the fashionable cocktail circuits from Tokyo to Washington.
The words are pronounced in awe of the lady, in admiration of the pragmatic acumen of the lady, in adoration of her political stance and she is held in high esteem indeed.
One instance of her political acumen and straight forwardness in action.
She visited China and had talks with President Hu Jintao in Peiking.
And she did not hesitate to offer official reception to Dalai Lama knowing it would anger China extremely. She stood by her principles.
And China, cancelled scheduled bilateral conferences with Germany.
Towards Israel, that troubled land: she openly declared :
“. . . feel a moral duty to protect Israel and would stand firm in the face of Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its threats to wipe the Jewish state off the map;”
” . . . feel honor-bound to fight racism and to foster close ties between Germans and the Jewish community;”
She boldly accepted the most obvious historical fact which former Chancellors, almost always, side tracked:
“It took more than 40 years for Germany as a whole to accept the responsibility it carries to ensure the safety of Israel,” she added.
And went to declare: “Only by accepting Germany’s past can we lay the foundation for the future. Only in as far as we acknowledge our responsibility for the moral catastrophe of Germany’s history can we build a humane future.”
Isn’t that facing troublesome problems in the face?
No wonder she is admired by all and some wish they have had the spunk to say her words in the first place.
She does not skip away having declared her moral stand on a given problem, be it Israel or Iran.
This is not ‘lip service’ but gritty, firm stand on principles on the international political arena.
Her recent talks with Presidents Sarkozy and Bush show her determination.
Angela Dorothea Merkel, nee Kasner, was born on 17 July 1954, in Hamburg, Germany. More details of her are found in the link given in the Resource Box below.
Angela Merkel is the most powerful woman in the world at present.
She is only the third woman to serve on the G8 after Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of Great Britain and Kim Campbell, Progressive Conservative Prime Minister of Canada (1993).
And in 2007 became the second woman to chair a G8 summit after Margaret Thatcher.
Her father, Horst Kasner, is a Lutheran pastor. And her mother, Herlind, a Teacher of English and Latin. Her mother is also a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
She has a brother, Marcus, and a sister, Irene.
Angela grew up in the countryside 80 km north of Berlin, in the former East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR).
A former senior member of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union states in his book: ‘Angela’s family travelled freely from East to West Germany, as well as possessed two automobiles.’
This leads to the conclusion that Angela’s father has had a ’sympathetic’ ear of the former communist regime.
Like most pupils, of that time, Angela, was a member of the official, socialist-led youth movement Free German Youth (FDJ).
Her innate talents wouldn’t restrain her.
All in good order, she became a member of the district board and secretary of the movement, at the Academy of Sciences in that organisation.
Angela was educated at the University of Leipzig, where she studied physics.
Later she continued her studies and worked at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences, where she was awarded her doctorate based on a thesis on quantum chemistry.
Here she met and married the chemistry professor Ulrich Merkel. Five years later they divorced but she carries his name to date.
Although she married, Joachim Sauer, quantum chemist and full professor at Berlin’s Humboldt University , six years later, he prefers to persue his own interests than follow his spouse around in her campaigns or celebrations.
In fact it is said: Professor Sauer has a 14-hour workday; he just has a very tight schedule.” Nor, however, “does he want to carry her handbag.” She has no children, but Sauer has two adult sons.
Unlike other head-of-state spouses Sauer is rarely seen at his wife’s side as she carries out her duties as the world’s most powerful woman.
Her irrepressible humane feelings and talent of organizing got her involved in the growing democracy movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
She joined a the new party Demokratischer Aufbruch. None of the old ones were good enough for her.
Following the first (and only) democratic election of the East German state, she became the deputy spokesperson of the new pre-unification caretaker government.
That’s a quantum leap for a rookie politician. A writing on the wall for things to come.
In the first election after the reunification of both East and West Germany she was elected to the Bundestag. She has steadfastly remained the constituency’s elected member until today. As other wily politicians she did not change over, with success, to a more comfortable constituency.
Immediately after her east geman party merged with the west German CDU she was made the Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl’s cabinet. Then she was made Minister for the Environment and Reactor Safety.
Dizzy heights indeed. This ministry gave the protegee of Chancellor Helmut Kohl greater political visibility. Kohl gave her a pet name: “das Mädchen” (”the girl”).
Now comes her faster spin onto greater political heights that carried her to the zenith of Germany’s government.
Her spin up could be followed in greater detail through the 2nd link in Resource Box down.
Angela was named as Secretary-General of her party, CDU, when it was defeated in the 1998 elections. Not a placating appointment, after a defeat, to say the least.
But in the next year itself her mettle was messaged.
The defeated CDU, guided by her, won election victories in six out of seven regional elections. Thus she broke the strangle hold of the SPD-Green on the Bundesrat, the legislative body representing the states.
There followed the infamous party financing scandal that compromised many leading figures. Helmut Khol himself was broiled in the affair.
Angela did not sit back and mope in an apathetic gloom. She jumped into the fray.
She criticized her former mentor,Helmut Kohl. A bold move. She advocated a fresh start for the party without him.
She was elected to replace the chairman, becoming the first female chair of her party.
She won against great odds.
She a female by gender, Protestant by religion, comes from predominanatly protestant northern germany, was selected to lead a political party diametrically opposed to her in its construction.
Her party, CDU, is a male-dominated, socially conservative, with deep Catholic roots, and strongholds in western and southern Germany.
However, her meteoric rise to fame took a severe blow when her own party and coalition partners were out-manoeuvred politically by CSU leader Edmund Stoiber.
He had the privilege of challenging Schröder for the Chancellorship. He squandered a large lead in the opinion polls to lose the election by a razor-thin margin.
Now Angela becomes the leader of the conservative opposition in the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag.
She began to support substantial reform strategy for economic and social system. She was considered pro-market, pro-management, pro-nuclear, pro-american than her own party. A novel stand to take indeed.
Angela advocated removing barriers to laying off employees and increasing the number of working hours in a week. In her view existing laws made the country less competitive because companies cannot control labour costs when business is low.
She favoured Germany’s nuclear power to be phased much slower than previous administration had planned.
She preferred a stronger transatlantic partnership and German-American friendship.
She did not hesitate to defy strong public opposition to come out in favour of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. She justified it as “unavoidable” and accused Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of anti-Americanism.
She became the mother of ’skeptical friendship’ when she said: We need the united states, we must work with them but not going to be their lap dog.
She made it very clear, in a straight forward manner: America remains a great ally of Germany but that doesn’t mean we favour Guantanamo Bay, renditions, torture, etc.
In the Turkish Membership in the European Union she criticised the government and favoured a “privileged partnership” instead.
By these unpopular, but pragmatic steps, she was branded as a ‘right-winger’ and an ‘american lackey’. But she weathered the storm and won in the end.
Besides, as a female politician from a centre right party, and a scientist she was compared by many to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and referred her as “Iron Lady”, “Iron Girl” and even “The Iron Frau”.
Thatcher too had a degree in chemistry.
Angela has many firsts to her credit :
1… the first female German chancellor
2… youngest chancellor ever
3… the first from East Germany
4… the first born after World War II
5… and the first with natural sciences.
It was not all plain sailing to chancellorship. She endured her share of distress and disturbances.
Her quality of resilience in the face of defeat is admirable.
She is not at all flamboyant, not showy, not obtrusive, but always gets the job done diplomatically behind closed doors.
It is said that she always writes when others are speaking. A meticulous note taker would, naturally, be short on ’small talk’.
And the victim of malicious rumours started by ‘empty heads’ who tend to talk rather than act.
Economic competence was her central theme in the 2005 national elections. But she confused ‘gross’ and ‘net’ income twice during a televised debate.
She took severe haranguing from the german media for this hiccup of a scientist in an economic field.
But she swung back and regained popularity, when she announced that she would appoint Paul Kirchhof, as Minister of Finance.
Kirchhof was a leading fiscal policy expert. In addition, he was a respected, former judge at the German Constitutional Court. Selection by Merit won her day.
Angela Merkel speaks fluently in three languages. A gift most national leaders of the world lack. She is fluent in German, her mother toungue, English and Russian.
In her office Merkel has a picture of the German-born Russian Empress Catherine the Great, who is described by Merkel as “a strong woman”.
Three of her famous quotes indicate her mind set :
“The question is not whether we are able to change but whether we are changing fast enough.”
“Whoever decides to dedicate their life to politics knows that earning money isn’t the top priority.”
And the third says it all: “We must never forget our responsibilities as politicians to our country and its citizens. We must always remain humble before our people.”
On the innovative side too she is second to none. Merkel launched her video podcast via the Bundeskanzlerin website, making her the first head of government to launch a regular video podcast.
In her field of chemistry and physics she has authored and co-authored many books. And they are highly regarded by her peers.
Her sparkling meteoric rise is one side of the coin.
Some consider her an opportunist who shed her reform programs the minute they were no longer expedient for keeping her in power.
However there are others that speculate she is a brilliant tactician … given the straitjacket imposed by her coalition, she is using her new green and left-of-center politics to expand support among middle-of-the-road voters in order to crush the Social Democrats in the 2009 election.
She rose in ranks at a terrific pace. As minister for women’s affairs, minister of the environment, general secretary, party leader, parliamentary group leader, and many more.
She was quick on the up take and picked up the power that other men, before her, like former chancellor Helmut Kohl and former general secretary Wolfgang Schaeuble, left behind.
At school, it is said in jest, she stood on a diving board, waiting to jump. She stood for a long time. And she took the plunge when the lesson was almost over.
A minister resigned and he went over to Angela for a discussion.
She asked him, “What’s bothering you?”
The minster walked out saying: “It’s impossible to talk to you sensibly.” The conversation lasted one minute.
German industry is growing at double-digit rates now. Some unsocialist economic reforms are the cause.
One million Germans found employment. The jobless rate was cut in two years from its all-time high of 12 percent to less than 9 percent today.
Those over 50 years who had little chance of ever landing a job too are now finding employment.
Germany is once again turning into a nation of growth in Europe.
France under Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany with Angela Merkel have moved closer to US since the Iraq invasion.
The curious thing of the whole thing is that the big three of Europe are reaching a positive position of similarity. Thanks to the unstinting chipping from behind the scene by the unobtrusive architect named: Angela Merkel.
She is pragmatic and cannot help being curt with feet draggers. It is the quality in any strong minded fast moving person.
And Angela is all that.