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German Culture: Angela Merkel

Robert Easton

In 2005 Angela Merkel (nee Kasner) defeated the incumbent Gerhard Schroeder to become German Chancellor, the first leader of the reunited Germany to come from East Germany, and the first female Chancellor in German history.

Being the daughter of a member of the clergy meant life was never easy for the young Merkel. Her family had shelves full of banned books, watched West German television, and even enjoyed games of Monopoly, the capitalist game of the enemy West.

Even at an early age she had to learn to think before she opened her mouth, a skill which no doubt stands her well in the dog-eat-dog jungle of German politics.

A brilliant student, Kasner wanted to become a teacher but was thwarted by the State because of her family background. A young friend once suggested to the then Angela Kasner that to avoid the problems which came with being the daughter of a 'Pfarrer', she could just mispronounce it a little, and claim to be a 'Fahrerstochter' – the daughter of a chauffeur.

It was whilst studying physics in Leipzig that she met Ulrich Merkel and took his surname. The marriage only lasted a few years and she later said that she really only got married 'because that was what everyone did'. Later on she married chemistry professor Joachim Sauer, with whom she remains today.

Merkel moved into politics following the fall of the Berlin Wall, and was elected to the government in the first and only democratic election of the GDR. After reunification she was elected to the Bundestag and was made Minister for Youth and Women when her party merged with the CDU.

Some speculate that the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl needed women and East Germans in his cabinet for political reasons, and brought in Merkel to kill two birds with one stone.

After Kohl's 1998 general election defeat to Schroeder, Merkel became the leader of the CDU and was favoured by most Germans to challenge Schroeder in the 2002 election.

However, unpopularity within her own party and cunning political manoeuvres by her opponent Stoiber meant she did not get the opportunity until 2005.

Due to a bizarre feature of the German constitution, the then Chancellor Schroeder had to trigger the election by deliberately losing a vote of confidence in himself.

At the beginning of the election campaign Merkel's CSU/CDU alliance had a 21% lead in opinion polls, but against the legendary campaigner Schroeder the lead quickly disappeared and in the end the CSU/CDU obtained a majority of just 1%, meaning their only choice was to form a coalition government.

Merkel based her campaign on promises of economic stability, but lost ground when she confused gross and net income twice during a live televised debate.

She regained support when she announced she would appoint former judge Paul Kirchoff as Minister of Finance, but then lost it again when she proposed increases in VAT and Kirchoff proposed a flat poll tax-style tax. Schroeder was able to gain votes simply by promising to do neither of those things.

After two months of negotiations between what were now bitter enemies it was decided that Germany would be ruled by a "Grand Coalition" of the two main blocs, the CDU/CSU alliance, and Schroeder's SPD. Merkel was to be Chancellor, Schroeder retired from politics.

Because of the coalition government Merkel has been forced to accept many fiscal policies contradictory to those she originally campaigned for.

She has pursued a similar foreign policy to the previous government, emphasising ties with France, and pressing for Turkey's candidacy for EU entry.

Schroeder has taken a different - and controversial - path since the end of his Chancellorship. Making use of his long, and often unpopular friendship with the Russian leader, ex-KGB agent Vladimir Putin, he quickly got a job as chairman of a company building a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.

As Chancellor, it was he who signed the deal agreeing to build the pipeline, just a few days before the General Election which he looked certain to lose.

Mr Schroeder has been criticised before for overlooking abuses of human rights and democracy in his friendship with Putin. It has been speculated in the press that Schroeder could be paid millions of dollars in his new job, but he claimed that accepting the job was 'a question of honour'.

In a special Bundestag session to debate the issue, Green MP Matthias Berninger described the job as 'politically disgusting' and called on Schroeder to reject it.

Other articles by Robert Easton
The Amber Room
The Berlin Wall
Austrian Beer
Austrian Food
German Beer
German Cars
German Food
German Music
German Philosophers
German Politics
German Stereotypes
Hiking in Austria
Johannes Gutenberg
Michael Schumacher
Sex in Germany
Sex in Austria
Sex in Switzerland
Skiing in Switzerland
Swiss Stereotypes
William Tell

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