angela merkel biography in german

Angela Merkel

Who Is Angela Merkel?

Angela Dorothea Kasner, better known as Angela Merkel, was born in Hamburg, West Germany, on July 17, 1954. Trained as a physicist, Merkel entered politics after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Rising to the position of chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union party, Merkel became Germany's first female chancellor and one of the leading figures of the European Union, following the 2005 national elections.

Early Years

German stateswoman and chancellor Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954, in Hamburg, Germany. The daughter of a Lutheran pastor and teacher who moved his family east to pursue his theology studies, Merkel grew up in a rural area north of Berlin in the then German Democratic Republic. She studied physics at the University of Leipzig, earning a doctorate in 1978, and later worked as a chemist at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry, Academy of Sciences from 1978 to 1990.

First Female Chancellor

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Merkel joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) political party. Soon after, she was appointed to Helmut Kohl's cabinet as minister for women and youth, and later she served as minister for the environment and nuclear safety. Following Kohl's defeat in the 1998 general election, she was named secretary-general of the CDU. In 2000, Merkel was chosen party leader, but she lost the CDU candidacy for chancellor to Edmund Stoiber in 2002.

In the 2005 election, Merkel narrowly defeated Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, winning by just three seats, and after the CDU agreed a coalition deal with the Social Democrats (SPD), she was declared Germany's first female chancellor. Merkel also became the first former citizen of the German Democratic Republic to lead the reunited Germany and the first woman to lead Germany since it became a modern nation-state in 1871. She was elected to a second term in 2009.

Merkel made headlines in October 2013 when she accused the U.S. National Security Agency of tapping her cell phone. At a summit of European leaders she chided the United States for this privacy breech, saying that "Spying among friends is never acceptable." Shortly afterward, in December 2013, she was sworn in for a third term.

Fourth-Term Challenges

Angela Merkel was reelected for a fourth term as chancellor in September 2017. However, although her CDU party held its majority in the Bundestag, the national parliament, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 13 percent of the vote to become the third-largest group in parliament, after the CDU/CSU and SPD. It was the first time a far-right party had entered the Bundestag since 1961.

“We expected a better result, that is clear,” Merkel said following the election. “The good thing is that we will definitely lead the next government.” She also said she would address supporters of the AfD “by solving problems, by taking up their worries, partly also their fears, but above all by good politics.”

Despite the challenge to her authority in the September election, Merkel topped Forbes' list of the most powerful women in the world for the seventh consecutive year in 2017, and for the 12th time overall.

Additional problems surfaced in mid-November, when attempts to form a new government coalition collapsed. Following weeks of negotiations, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) suddenly pulled out of talks with the CDU/CSU and the Greens, over differences regarding immigration and other policies. The rejection marked another blow to Merkel, who said that her party would "continue to take responsibility for this country, even in such a difficult situation."

In March 2018, the SPD voted to renew its coalition with the CDU, clearing the path for Merkel to finally move forward with her fourth term. Talks had stalled between the parties, though the gridlock eased after SPD leader Martin Schulz stepped down in February.

That summer, Merkel again had to walk a political tightrope when facing an ultimatum from Horst Seehofer, her interior minister and the leader of Bavaria's Christian Social Union. Seehofer had threatened to quit over Merkel's refusal to deny entry to migrants with asylum claims pending elsewhere in the European Union, but in early July the two announced they had agreed to a compromise, in which transit centers would be established on the border with Austria to route asylum seekers to their responsible countries.

In October 2018, Merkel announced that she planned to step aside as chair of the CDU at the end of the year and would not run for reelection as chancellor in 2021. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer subsequently took over leadership of the CDU, a move seen as an endorsement of Merkel's legacy, until Kramp-Karrenbauer's surprise resignation in February 2020 clouded the picture for the chancellor's final months in office.

Further complicating matters was the outbreak of the coronavirus which shut down industries and forced lifestyle changes for people around the world. Merkel implemented rules to close restaurants and other gathering areas, but the measures were not enough to prevent her exposure to a doctor with the virus, leading to her self-quarantine in late March.

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• Name: Angela Merkel
• Birth Year: 1954
• Birth date: July 17, 1954
• Birth City: Hamburg
• Birth Country: Germany
• Gender: Female
• Best Known For: Angela Merkel is a German politician best known as the first female chancellor of Germany and one of the architects of the European Union.
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• Astrological Sign: Cancer
• University of Leipzig
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• Angela Merkel is the first female chancellor of Germany.

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• Article Title: Angela Merkel Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/political-figures/angela-merkel
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• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 23, 2020
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014
• Spying among friends is never acceptable.
• We need trust among allies and partners. Trust now has to be built anew.

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Angela Merkel was sworn in as Chancellor on November 22, 2005. She is the first woman and the first East German to hold this office. Her CV traces the most important milestones on her way to taking this office.

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Kanzlerin Angela Merkel

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Angela Merkel was born in Hamburg on 17 July 1954. She is a Protestant Christian and is married to Joachim Sauer.

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Who Is Angela Merkel?

Germany’s first female chancellor served for 16 years from 2005 to 2021

Matt Webber is an experienced personal finance writer, researcher, and editor. He has published widely on personal finance, marketing, and the impact of technology on contemporary arts and culture.

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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.

Key Takeaways

• Angela Merkel was elected leader of Germany in 2005, and she held that position until she retired in 2021. She was the first woman to be chancellor, and led Germany longer than any other post-World War II chancellor with the exception of Helmut Kohl.
• Merkel was born in West Germany, raised in then-communist East Germany, and earned a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry before entering politics in 1990.
• During her leadership of Germany (and, arguably, the European Union), she successfully navigated the 2008 financial crash, the 2015 migrant crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. 
• Merkel has been praised as the most successful politician of modern times, and she is highly regarded for her pragmatic, non-ideological leadership style.

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.

Three weeks after Merkel's birth, her father accepted a post in Quitzow, a town in then-communist East Germany, and the family moved there. When Merkel was three years old, her family moved again within East Germany. From that point on, Merkel grew up in Templin a town in Brandenburg located to the 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 physics 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. Merkel was once approached by the Stasi (the East German secret police) to become an informant, and she refused.

Merkel’s political career began shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Shortly after the fall of the wall, she joined a new political party called Demokratischer Aufbruch (D.A., or “Democratic Awakening” 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 Union (CDU) party in the constituency of Stralsund-Nordvorpommern-Rügen. She won the election, and became a representative in Germany's Bundestag, (the lower house of parliament). In 1991, she was appointed as Minister for Women and Youth by Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Merkel was then successively promoted to increasingly senior positions in the CDU. She served as Minister for the Environment from 1994 to 1998, and secretary-general of the CDU from 1998 to 2000. In 2000, she was elected leader of the CDU, becoming the first woman and first non-Catholic to lead the party.

In 2002, Edmund Stoiber of the CDU's Bavarian sister party the CSU and candidate for chancellor, led the CDU/CSU block to a defeat in the national election. He stepped down, clearing the way for Merkel to become the next candidate for chancellor, and the clear leader of the opposition. In the 2005 election, her party won about 1% more votes than their main rival, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). However, they did not win a majority, and Merkel needed to form a coalition with another party in order to govern. The two parties entered into a “grand coalition” to form a government, with Merkel as chancellor.

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 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, and is widely seen as having “saved the Euro.” In order to save the European financial system, Merkel crafted EU bailouts for debt-laden European countries in exchange for those countries adopting austerity plans. She also backed Italian Mario Draghi to lead the European Central Bank (ECB) who took aggressive action to stimulate Eurozone economies with monetary policy.

The second crisis came in 2015, which marked the beginning of a period of significantly increased arrival of refugees and migrants to Europe. Millions of migrants and refugees came to Europe seeking asylum. A large cohort of them were Syrians escaping their country's horrific civil war. Germany accepted 1.3 million refugees during 2015 and 2016 alone, and continued to accept more in subsequent years. Merkel stuck to her policy of accepting refugees despite facing some political backlash.

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 in 2021. That year, her party was defeated, and she was replaced as chancellor by Olaf Scholz of the SPD.

While Merkel was in office, her supporters had a fond nickname for her: “Mutti,” which means Mommy.

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.”

Merkel is known for being chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She was the first woman to lead the country and the second-longest-serving chancellor in Germany’s history.

Merkel’s net worth has been estimated at around $11.5 million. Her salary as chancellor was reported to be approximately $234,000 a year in 2015, and just shy of $370,000 in 2018. A very large increase, but still below the $400,000 paid to the U.S. president.

Merkel has been praised for her pragmatism and ability to compromise. She has rarely taken a strict, ideological stance on key issues, and she is willing to be led by evidence and guidance. 

Olaf Scholz succeeded Merkel as chancellor in 2021 and remains the German Chancellor as of 2024.

Merkel has not spoken in detail about her reasons for her resignation, though some have speculated that her health was suffering by 2018. When she retired, she was 67 years old.

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.

Britannica. " Angela Merkel ."

The Harvard Gazette. “ Angela Merkel, The Scientist Who Became a World Leader .”

Biography. " Angela Merkel ."

Britannica. “ Angela Merkel .”

The Guardian. “ Six Things You Didn’t Know About Angela Merkel .”

The Guardian. " The Crisis Manager: Angela Merkel’s Double-Edged European Legacy ."

WENR: World Education News & Reviews, World Education Services (WES). “ The State of Refugee Integration in Germany in 2019 .”

Associated Press. " German Government Agrees $60 Billion Climate Policy Package ."

The Atlantic. “ The Secret to Germany’s COVID-19 Success: Angela Merkel Is a Scientist .”

Time. “ Person of the Year: Chancellor of the Free World .”

The Atlantic. “ The Merkel Model .”

International Business Times. " Angela Merkel Net Worth 2024: Exploring the Finances of Germany’s Former Chancellor ."

Associated Press. " End of an Era: Germany’s Merkel Bows Out After 16 Years ."

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