Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021
"Merkel" redirects here. For other uses, see Merkel (disambiguation).
Angela Dorothea Merkel (German:[aŋˈɡeːladoʁoˈteːaˈmɛʁkl̩]ⓘ;[a]née Kasner; born 17 July 1954) is a German retired politician who served as Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021. She is the only woman to have held the office. She previously served as Leader of the Opposition from 2002 to 2005 and as Leader of the Christian Democratic Union from 2000 to 2018.[9] During her chancellorship, Merkel was frequently referred to as the de facto leader of the European Union (EU) and the most powerful woman in the world.
Merkel was born in Hamburg in West Germany. Her family moved to East Germany when she was an infant. Merkel obtained a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989.[10] She then entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989, briefly serving as deputy spokeswoman for the first democratically elected government of East Germany led by Lothar de Maizière. Following German reunification in 1990, Merkel was elected to the Bundestag for the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. As the protégée of chancellor Helmut Kohl, Merkel was appointed as Minister for Women and Youth in 1991, later becoming Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in 1994. After the CDU lost the 1998 federal election, Merkel was elected general secretary of the party. She then became the party's first female leader, and the first female leader of the Opposition, two years later.
Following the 2005 federal election, Merkel was elected chancellor, leading a grand coalition consisting of the CDU, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). She was the first woman to be elected chancellor, and the first chancellor of reunified Germany to have been raised in the former East Germany.[b] In the 2009 federal election, the CDU obtained the largest share of the vote, and Merkel subsequently formed a coalition government with the Free Democratic Party (FDP), an alliance more favourable to the CDU than the grand coalition.[12] In the 2013 federal election, the CDU won a landslide victory and formed a second grand coalition with the SPD, after the FDP lost all of its representation in the Bundestag.[13] In the 2017 federal election, Merkel led the CDU to become the largest party for the fourth time, resulting in the formation of a third grand coalition with the SPD.[14]
In foreign policy, Merkel emphasised international cooperation, both in the context of the EU and NATO, and initiating the Russian reset and strengthening of Eurasian and transatlantic economic relations. In the first half of 2007, Merkel served as president of the European Council and played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. Merkel's governments managed the global 2007–2008 financial crisis and the European debt crisis. She negotiated the 2008 European Union stimulus plan, which focused on infrastructure spending and public investment to counteract the Great Recession. In domestic policy, Merkel's Energiewende programme supported the development of renewable energy sources and eventually phased out the use of nuclear power in Germany. Despite the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, which prompted sanctions around the world, she initiated the construction of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipelines to Russia and protected their construction from United States sanctions imposed in 2019. Reforms to the Bundeswehr, health care reform, the 2010s European migrant crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic were major issues during her chancellorship. Merkel stepped down as leader of the CDU in 2018 and did not seek a fifth term as chancellor in the 2021 federal election. Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, her legacy came under increased scrutiny both in Germany and abroad for her relatively good relations with Russia and increasing the German economy's dependence on Russia, as well as the downsizing of the military that occurred during her tenure.[15][16]
See also: Family of Angela Merkel
Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in 1954, in Hamburg, West Germany, the daughter of Horst Kasner (1926–2011; néKaźmierczak),[17][18] a Lutheran pastor and a native of Berlin, and his wife Herlind (1928–2019; née Jentzsch), born in Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), a teacher of English and Latin. She has two younger siblings, Marcus Kasner, a physicist, and Irene Kasner, an occupational therapist. In her childhood and youth, Merkel was known among her peers by the nickname "Kasi", derived from her last name Kasner.[19][page needed][20]
Merkel is of German and Polish descent. Her paternal grandfather, Ludwik Kasner, was a German policeman of Polish ethnicity. After being captured in France during World War I, he joined the Blue Army and likely fought against Germany.[21][22] He married Merkel's grandmother Margarethe, a German from Berlin, and relocated to her hometown where he again worked in the police. In 1930, they Germanised the Polish name Kaźmierczak to Kasner.[23][24][25][26] Merkel's maternal grandparents were the Danzig politician Willi Jentzsch and Gertrud Alma (née Drange), a daughter of the city clerk of Elbing (now Elbląg, Poland) Emil Drange. Since the mid-1990s, Merkel has publicly mentioned her Polish heritage on several occasions and described herself as a quarter Polish, but her Polish roots became better known as a result of a 2013 biography.[27]
Religion played a key role in the Kasner family's migration from West Germany to East Germany.[28] Merkel's paternal grandfather was originally Catholic but the entire family converted to Lutheranism during the childhood of her father,[24] who later studied Lutheran theology in Heidelberg and Hamburg. In 1954, when Angela was just three months old, her father received a pastorate at the church in Quitzow [de] (a district of Perleberg in Brandenburg), which was then in East Germany.[29] The family moved to Templin and Merkel grew up in the countryside 90 km (56 mi) north of East Berlin.[29]
In 1968, Merkel joined the Free German Youth (FDJ), the official communist youth movement sponsored by the ruling Marxist–Leninist Socialist Unity Party of Germany.[30][31] Membership was nominally voluntary, but those who did not join found it difficult to gain admission to higher education.[32] She did not participate in the secular coming-of-age ceremony Jugendweihe, however, which was common in East Germany. Instead, she was confirmed.[33] During this time, she participated in several compulsory courses on Marxism–Leninism, with her grades only being regarded as "sufficient".[34] Merkel later said that "Life in the GDR was sometimes almost comfortable in a certain way, because there were some things one simply couldn't influence."[35] Merkel learned to speak Russian fluently at school, and she was awarded prizes for her proficiency in Russian and mathematics, being at the top of her class in these subjects. She completed her school education with the best possible average Abitur grade of 1.0.[36]
Merkel continued her education at Karl Marx University, Leipzig, where she studied physics from 1973 to 1978.[29] While a student, she participated in the reconstruction of the ruin of the Moritzbastei, a project students initiated to create their own club and recreation facility on campus. Such an initiative was unprecedented in the GDR of that period, and initially resisted by the university. With backing of the local leadership of the SED party, the project was allowed to proceed.[37]
Near the end of her studies, Merkel sought an assistant professorship at an engineering school. As a condition for getting the job, Merkel was told she would need to agree to report on her colleagues to officers of the Stasi. Merkel declined, using the excuse that she could not keep secrets well enough to be an effective spy.[38]
Merkel worked and studied at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Adlershof from 1978 to 1990. At first, she and her husband squatted in Mitte.[39] At the Academy of Sciences, she became a member of its FDJ secretariat. According to her former colleagues, she openly propagated Marxism as the secretary for "Agitation and Propaganda".[40] However, Merkel has denied this claim and stated that she was secretary for culture, which involved activities like obtaining theatre tickets and organising talks by visiting Soviet authors.[41] She stated: "I can only rely on my memory, if something turns out to be different, I can live with that."[40]
After being awarded a doctorate (Dr. rer. nat.) for her thesis on quantum chemistry in 1986,[42] she worked as a researcher and published several academic papers.[43][44] In 1986, she was allowed to travel to West Germany to attend a congress. She also participated in a multi-week language[which?] course in Donetsk, in the then-Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.[45]
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 served as the catalyst for Merkel's political career.[46] Although she did not participate in the crowd celebrations the night the wall came down, one month later Merkel became involved in the growing democracy movement, joining the new party Democratic Beginning (Demokratischer Aufbruch, abbreviated to DA).[46] Party Leader Wolfgang Schnur appointed her as press spokeswoman of the party in February 1990. However, Schnur was revealed to have served as an "informal co-worker" for the Stasi just a few weeks ahead of the first (and only) multi-party election in 1990 and was later expelled from the party. As a result, the DA lost most of its electoral support, only managing to obtain four seats in the Volkskammer. However, because the DA was a member party of the Alliance for Germany, which won the election in a landslide, the DA was included in the government coalition. Merkel was appointed deputy spokesperson of this last pre-unification government under Lothar de Maizière.[47]
De Maizière was impressed with the way Merkel handled journalists investigating Schnur's role in the Stasi.[38][46] In April 1990, the DA merged with the East German Christian Democratic Union, which in turn merged with its western counterpart after reunification.[48][49]
In the German federal election of 1990, the first to be held following reunification, Merkel successfully stood for election to the Bundestag in the parliamentary constituency of Stralsund – Nordvorpommern – Rügen in North Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.[50] She received the crucial backing of influential CDU minister and state party chairman Günther Krause. She was re-elected from this constituency (renamed, with slightly adjusted borders, Vorpommern-Rügen – Vorpommern-Greifswald I in 2003) in every election until the CDU lost its direct mandate from the constituency in the 2021 federal election.[51] Almost immediately following her entry into parliament, Merkel was appointed by ChancellorHelmut Kohl to serve as Minister for Women and Youth in the federal cabinet.
In November 1991, Merkel, with the support of the federal CDU, ran for the state leadership of the CDU in the state of Brandenburg, which neighbours Berlin. She lost to Ulf Fink.[52] In June 1993, Merkel was elected leader of the CDU in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, succeeding her former mentor Günther Krause.[53]
Although Merkel had little interest in the political position as such, it has been described as instrumental in building her early political image.[54][55] During her tenure, the government codified the right to preschool education, although the law only went into effect in 1996.[56] In June 1992, § 218 of the StGB, which governed abortion rights, was rewritten to allow abortions until the 12th week of pregnancy.[57] Though she was personally opposed to abortion at the time, Merkel abstained during the vote on the bill.[58] The law was later overturned by the Federal Constitutional Court on the basis that there must be a general prohibition of abortion.[57][59]
In 1994, she was promoted to the position of Minister for the Environment and Nuclear Safety, which gave her greater political visibility and a platform on which to build her personal political career. As one of Kohl's protégées and his youngest Cabinet Minister, she was frequently referred to by Kohl as "my girl" (mein Mädchen).[60] During this period, she was closely mentored by Kohl.[55]
As Minister of the Environment, Merkel was instrumental in setting up the United Nations 1995 Berlin Climate Change Conference. She is often credited as having brought about its most notable result, the first international commitment to a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.[61][54][62] Around this time, she also first hired Beate Baumann, who would remain a close advisor to Merkel.[55] Merkel's performance as Minister of the Environment was criticised as "pitiful" by Gerhard Schröder.[54]
After the Kohl Government was defeated at the 1998 election, Merkel was appointed Secretary-General of the CDU.[55] The 1998 election had widespread impacts; it was the CDU's worst performance in a federal election since 1949, and it resulted in Germany's first post-war left-wing government,[c] led by the SPD.[63]
In the wake of this defeat on the federal level, Merkel oversaw a string of CDU election victories in six out of seven state elections in 1999, breaking the long-standing SPD-Green hold on the Bundesrat. Following a party funding scandal that compromised many leading figures of the CDU – including Kohl himself and his successor as CDU Leader, Wolfgang Schäuble – Merkel criticised her former mentor publicly and advocated a fresh start for the party without him.[55]
On 10 April 2000, Merkel was elected to replace Schäuble as Chairperson of the CDU, becoming the first female leader of a German party.[64] Her election surprised many observers, as her personality offered a contrast to the party she had been elected to lead; Merkel is a centristProtestant originating from predominantly Protestant northern Germany, while the CDU is a male-dominated, socially conservative party with strongholds in western and southern Germany, and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, has deep Catholic roots.[65]
Following Merkel's election as CDU Leader, the CDU did not obtain electoral victories in subsequent state elections. In February 2001, her rival Friedrich Merz voiced his intention to become Gerhard Schröder's main challenger for Chancellorship in the 2002 election. Merkel's own ambition to become Chancellor was well-known, but she lacked the support of the most influential members within her own party. Rival candidate and leader of the CSU Edmund Stoiber was much more popular within the party at the time. In a private negotiation that came to be known as the Wolfratshausen Breakfast, [de ] Merkel agreed to cede the opportunity to challenge Schröder to Stoiber; in exchange, she was to become leader of the CDU/CSU faction in the Bundestag following the election.[66][67][68] Although pre-election polling had indicated that voters strongly favoured Stoiber, he went on to lose the election by a thin margin. The election campaign was dominated by the Iraq War. While Chancellor Schröder had made clear he would not join the war in Iraq,[69] Merkel was in support of the war at the time, although she later claimed that she had opposed it.[70][71]
After Stoiber's defeat in 2002, in addition to her role as CDU Leader, Merkel became Leader of the Opposition in the Bundestag, as had been agreed upon between her and Stoiber. Friedrich Merz, who had held the post prior to the 2002 election, was eased out to make way for Merkel.[72]
Merkel supported a substantial reform agenda for Germany's economic and social system and was considered more pro-market than her own party (the CDU). She advocated German labour law changes, specifically removing barriers to laying off employees and increasing the allowed number of work hours in a week. She argued that existing laws made the country less competitive, because companies could not easily control labour costs when business was slow.[73]
Merkel argued that Germany should phase out nuclear power less quickly than the Schröder administration had planned.[74][75]
Merkel advocated a strong transatlantic partnership and German-American friendship. In the spring of 2003, defying strong public opposition, Merkel came out in favour of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, describing it as "unavoidable".[70] She also criticised the government's support for the accession of Turkey to the European Union, instead arguing in favour of a "privileged partnership".[76]
Main article: First Merkel cabinet
On 30 May 2005, Merkel won the CDU/CSU nomination to challenge Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the SPD in the 2005 federal elections. Her party began the campaign with a 21–point lead over the SPD in national opinion polls, although her personal popularity lagged behind that of the incumbent. However, the CDU/CSU campaign suffered[77] when Merkel, having made economic competence central to the CDU's platform, confused gross and net income twice during a televised debate.[78] She regained some momentum after she announced that she would appoint Paul Kirchhof, a former judge at the German Constitutional Court and leading fiscal policy expert, as Minister of Finance.[77]
Merkel and the CDU lost ground after Kirchhof proposed the introduction of a flat tax in Germany, again undermining the party's broad appeal on economic affairs.[79] This was compounded by Merkel's proposal to increase VAT[80] to reduce Germany's deficit and fill the gap in revenue from a flat tax. The SPD were able to increase their support simply by pledging not to introduce flat taxes or increase VAT.[77] Although Merkel's standing recovered after she distanced herself from Kirchhof's proposals, she remained considerably less popular than Schröder, who had been perceived as the more generally competent and trustworthy candidate.[81] The CDU's lead was down to 9 percentage points on the eve of the election, with Merkel having a significant lead in popularity based on opinion polls.[82][83] On 18 September 2005, Merkel's CDU/CSU and Schröder's SPD went head-to-head in the national elections, with the CDU/CSU winning 35.2% (CDU 27.8% / CSU 7.5%)[81] of the second votes[d] to the SPD's 34.2%.[83] The result was so close that both Schröder and Merkel initially claimed victory.[55][83] Neither the SPD–Green coalition nor the CDU/CSU and its preferred coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party, held enough seats to form a majority in the Bundestag.[83] A grand coalition between the CDU/CSU and SPD would face the challenge of both parties demanding the chancellorship.[83][84] However, after three weeks of negotiations, the two parties reached a deal for a grand coalition whereby Merkel would become Chancellor and the SPD would hold 8 of the 16 seats in the cabinet.[84] The deal was approved by both parties at party conferences on 14 November 2005.[85]
Merkel was elected Chancellor by the majority of delegates (397 to 217) in the newly assembled Bundestag on 22 November 2005, but 51 members of the governing coalition voted against her.[86] Reports at the time indicated that the grand coalition would pursue a mix of policies, some of which differed from Merkel's political platform as leader of the opposition and candidate for Chancellor. The coalition's intent was to cut public spending whilst increasing VAT (from 16 to 19%), social insurance contributions and the top rate of income tax.[87]
When announcing the coalition agreement, Merkel stated that the main aim of her government would be to reduce unemployment, and that it was this issue on which her government would be judged.[88]
Reform of the German healthcare system was a salient issue during the 2005 election; the previous system had been criticised as inefficient and overly bureaucratic.[89] After a significant period of negotiations, a deal was passed in 2006. While this agreement was described as having "saved the coalition government", it was also widely criticised as ineffectual. The deal also increased the tax burden on employers and their publicly insured employees.[90][91]