Photo Gallery The Two-Time Chancellor
Unabashed joy in the face of the old and new chancellor: After September's election, Angela Merkel's conservatives were able to end their unloved grand coalition with the center-left Social Democrats and form a new government with their desired partner, the business-friendly Free Democrats. Fifty-five-year-old Merkel is now the head of government.
Angela Merkel was born in Hamburg on July 17, 1954 as Angela Dorothea Kasner. The daughter of a Lutheran pastor and a teacher, she grew up with her two younger siblings in Templin in the eastern state of Brandenburg. (Picture: Angela Kasner camping in Brandenburg in 1973.)
Angela Merkel in a class photo at the Polytechnical School in Templin (1971, second row, middle, slightly obscured.) In the 1970s, she studied physics in Leipzig before taking a job at the Berlin Central Institute for Physical Chemistry. Merkel became a member of the East German SED Communist Party's FDJ youth organization, but she never became a member of the SED. Her marriage to physics student Ulrich Merkel ended after five years in divorce in 1982.
During German reunification, Merkel became involved in the "Democratic Awakening" party. In February 1990 she took over the party's press department. Following the first and only democratic election of the East German state, she became the deputy spokesperson of the new pre-unification caretaker government under Lothar de Maizière. She entered the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party of the German Democratic Republic, which soon joined with its center-right Western counterpart. In the first post-reunification general election in December 1990, she was elected to the federal parliament from a constituency including the districts of Northern Pomerania and Rügen, as well as the city of Stralsund. Under Chancellor Helmut Kohl she was made minister for women and youth.
"Kohl's Girl" was initially inconspicuous, but she did not lack an instinct for power. Merkel knew that as long as she had no power in the government on her own, she needed to rely on Kohl -- and he did not disappoint her. In November 1991 she became deputy party chairman, and in June 1993 she became the chairman in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In 1994, she was made minister for the environment and nuclear safety.
Merkel in Germany's parliament, the Bundestag (2005): After her party's donations and slush funds scandal in the 1990s, Merkel was seen as the great hope for a new beginning for her party and for its future. She became the party's general secretary and distanced herself from her scandal tainted former political patron, Helmut Kohl. In February 2000, she replaced Wolfgang Schäuble as the party's chairman after he fell as a result of the funding scandal. In 2002, however, she stood back as the chief of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, Edmund Stoiber of the Christian Social Union, ran for chancellor and lost by a small margin. Merkel strengthened her leadership position, took over the party's group in parliament and became opposition leader. During early elections in September 2005, she successfully challenged Gerhard Schröder to become Germany's next chancellor.
Merkel became Germany's first female chancellor and also, at 51, the youngest person ever to hold the office. During her first term, she served in a strange-bedfellows, right-left grand coalition with the left-leaning Social Democrats. On Nov. 22, 2005, Gerhard Schröder congratulated his successor.
Britain's Economist has referred to the chancellor as a "world star" and Merkel has repeatedly topped Forbes magazine's list of the world's most powerful women. Too powerful for Nicolas Sarkozy? Merkel and Sarkozy frequently disagree on political issues, but one issue has provided them with common ground: Both oppose Turkish membership in the European Union.
Initially, Merkel was portrayed in the media as the international chancellor. She proved a successful negotiator at the European Union summit, reanimated German-American relations and cut straight to the point in issues related to Russia and China. In June 2007 she hosted the G-8 summit in Heiligendamm, in northern Germany, during which she encouraged US President George W. Bush to do more to combat climate change.
Merkel at the opening of the Oslo Opera House (2008): Merkel's popularity remains high. And she knows how to channel that popularity on behalf of her party. In September, she secured another four years in government for her party, this time with its desired partner, the business-friendly FDP.
In 1998 she married chemistry professor Joachim Sauer but decided to keep her first husband's name. On holiday here on the island of Ischia in Italy in 2006, Merkel has ditched her official garb for a more casual look.
