Who Is Angela Merkel?

Angela Merkel (born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954) was chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She was the first woman to hold the office and the second-longest-serving chancellor in German history.

Merkel was born in West Germany, raised in East Germany, and studied chemistry. She entered politics in 1990, just after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. She was elected chancellor—the leader of Germany—in September 2005, and she is credited with steering Germany through the 2008 financial crisis and the European refugee crisis of 2015.

Early Life and Education

Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954 in Hamburg, which was then part of West Germany. Her father, Horst Kasner, was a Lutheran pastor, and her mother was a teacher of English and Latin. Merkel’s paternal grandfather was Polish, and she has described herself as a quarter Polish.

When Merkel was 3 years old, her father accepted a post in Quitzow, a town in then-communist East Germany. From this point on, Merkel grew up in Templin, East Germany, about 50 miles north of Berlin. Like most young people in East Germany at that time, Merkel joined the Free German Youth, the official communist youth movement sponsored by the ruling Marxist-Leninist Socialist Unity Party of Germany.

Merkel studied chemistry at Karl Marx University, Leipzig from 1973 to 1978, and then worked at the Central Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Adlershof from 1978 to 1990. She received a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986. During this time, she declined a post as an assistant professor because she would have had to spy on her colleagues for the Stasi (the East German secret police) if she had taken the job.

Political Career

Merkel’s political career began shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Just one month later, she joined a new political party called Demokratischer Aufbruch (D.A., or “Democratic Beginning” in English). She quickly became press spokesperson for the party, and was then appointed deputy spokesperson of the last pre-unification government under Lothar de Maizière.

In the next election, in 1990, Merkel stood for election for the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) in the constituency of Stralsund-Nordvorpommern-Rügen, in North Germany. She won the election, and in fact won this constituency in every election until 2017. She was initially appointed as Minister for Women and Youth.

Merkel was then successively promoted to increasingly senior positions in the CDU. She served as Minister for the Environment from 1994 to 1998, and General Secretary of the CDU from 1998 to 2000. In 2000, she was elected chairperson of the CDU, becoming the first woman to lead a German political party.

In 2002, Edmund Stoiber led the CDU to defeat in a national election. He stepped down, clearing the way for Merkel to become leader of the CDU in opposition. In the 2005 election, her party won almost exactly the same number of votes as their main rival, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). The two parties entered into a “grand coalition” to form a government, with Merkel as chancellor.

Chancellorship

Merkel faced a number of significant challenges during her leadership of Germany, but she remained popular with the German people for more than 15 years. She won every election, albeit sometimes as part of a coalition government, until she stepped down in 2021.

The first of these crises arose in 2008: the European sovereign debt crisis. Merkel took a pragmatic approach to the crisis—she didn’t guarantee the savings held by Germans in private savings accounts, but she used Germany’s economic power to take a leading role in the European Union’s debt relief policy. Because of this, she often has been credited as having “saved the Euro.”

The second crisis came in 2015, at the beginning of a period of significantly increased movement of refugees and migrants into Europe. About 1.3 million people came to the continent to request asylum, the most in a single year since World War II. They were mostly Syrians. Merkel’s approach was to welcome these refugees to Germany—the country accepted 1.2 million asylum seekers in 2015.

Merkel went on to pass a set of climate policies worth €54 billion and led Germany through the COVID-19 pandemic, winning praise for her leadership on both issues. In 2018, Merkel announced that she would not seek reelection. Her party (the CDU) failed to win an outright majority, and she was replaced as chancellor by Olaf Scholz in 2021.

Notable Accomplishments

At first glance, Merkel appears to have been a surprising candidate for leader of the CDU. She is a centrist Protestant from predominantly Protestant northern Germany, while the CDU has long been regarded as a male-dominated, socially conservative party with strongholds in western and southern Germany. However, she was often able to turn her status as an outsider into an asset.

Merkel’s approach to politics was one of pragmatism, compromise, and alliance building. Domestically, she often sought to build broad coalitions around her policies, and she was often praised for taking a moderate line on many issues. Internationally, she developed close working relationships with many world leaders, including former U.S. President Barack Obama.

Perhaps Merkel’s biggest accomplishment, however, was the continued success of Germany and the European Union throughout her leadership. In December 2015, Merkel was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year, with the magazine’s cover declaring her to be the “Chancellor of the Free World.” The Atlantic described her in 2019 as “the world’s most successful living politician, on the basis of both achievement and longevity.”

The Bottom Line

Angela Merkel was elected leader of Germany in 2005 and held that position until she retired in 2021. She was the first woman to be chancellor, the youngest (at age 51) to hold that office, and the second-longest-serving leader in Germany’s history. During her leadership, she successfully navigated a series of crises: the 2008 financial crash, the 2015 migrant crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.