Angela Merkel

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Angela Merkel
Angela Merkel
Order: Designate
34th Chancellor of Germany
(8th of the Federal Republic)1
Term of office: 2005 (pending)1 – 
Preceded by: Gerhard Schröder
Succeeded by: has not assumed office yet
Date of birth: July 17, 1954
Place of birth: Hamburg
Spouse: Joachim Sauer
Religion: Protestant
Political party: Christian Democratic Union

Dr. Angela Dorothea Merkel (born July 17, 1954) is a German politician. She is a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and was nominated by her party (and the sister party CSU) for the post of Chancellor at the 2005 federal election, with almost all commentators predicting victory for opposition. After the results of that election proved surprisingly close, three weeks of negotiations resulted in an agreement that should see Merkel become Chancellor in a Grand coalition with the Social Democratic Party of Germany.

Merkel has been chair of the CDU since 2000. She is a Member of the German Parliament, representing a constituency which includes the districts of Nordvorpommern and Rügen, as well as the city of Stralsund, in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. She will be the first former East German to lead the reunified Germany, the first female Chancellor of Germany and the first woman to lead Germany since it became a modern nation state in 1871.

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Background

Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in Hamburg, the daughter of Horst Kasner, a Lutheran pastor, and his wife Herlind née Jentzsch, a teacher. In 1954 her father received a pastorship at the church in Quitzow at Perleberg, and the family moved to Templin. Merkel grew up in the countryside only 80km (50 mi) north of Berlin, in communist German Democratic Republic (GDR). She was educated in Templin and at the University of Leipzig, where she studied physics (1973-1978). Merkel worked and studied at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences (1978-1990). After graduating with a doctorate in physics she worked in quantum chemistry.

In 1989, she got involved in the growing democracy movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall, joining the new party Demokratischer Aufbruch. Following the first (and only) democratic election in the GDR, she became the deputy spokesperson of the new government under Lothar de Maizière. Following the first post-reunification general election in December 1990, her party merged with the western German CDU, and she became Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl's cabinet. In 1994, she was made Minister for the Environment and Reactor Safety, which gave her greater political visibility and a platform on which to build her political career. As one of Kohl's protégées and his youngest cabinet minister, she was referred to as "das Mädchen" ("the girl") by Kohl.

According to an article in Der Spiegel, her background in the former GDR has served her well in post-reunification politics. For the first 36 years of her life, she honed her skills at disguising her inner thoughts and feelings — essential for survival in a society where every room might contain a State Security Police (Stasi) informer, and especially for a pastor's daughter. Speaking near-perfect English and remarking on her background as an "Ossi", she says: "Anyone who really has something to say doesn't need make-up."

From 1977 until their divorce in 1982, she was married to physicist Ulrich Merkel. Since 1998, she has been married to Berlin chemistry professor Joachim Sauer and has no children.

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Leader of the Opposition

When the Kohl government was defeated in the 1998 general election, Merkel was named Secretary-General of the CDU. In this position, Merkel oversaw a string of Christian Democrat election victories in six out of seven provincial elections in 1999 alone, breaking the Social Democrat/Green coalition's hold on the Bundesrat, the legislative body representing the states. As a result of a party financing scandal which compromised many leading figures of the CDU (most notably Kohl himself and the then party chairman Wolfgang Schäuble, Kohl's hand-picked successor), Merkel gained further. She criticized her former mentor, Kohl, advocated a fresh start for the party without him, and was subsequently rewarded by replacing Schäuble to become the first female chair of her party. In November of 2001, despite her pledge to clean up the party, she refused to hold further inquiries into the financing scandal. Merkel's election on April 10, 2000 was surprising, as her personality offered a contrast to the party she had been chosen to lead; Merkel is a Protestant woman, originating from predominantly Protestant northern Germany, while the CDU is a male-dominated, socially conservative party with deep Catholic roots, and has its stronghold in southern and westernmost Germany.

Following Merkel's selection as CDU leader, she enjoyed considerable popularity among the German population and was favoured by Germans to become Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's challenger in the 2002 election. However, she was unpopular in her own party and particularly its sister party (the Bavarian Christian Social Union, or CSU), and was subsequently out-manoeuvred politically by CSU leader Edmund Stoiber, who had had the privilege of challenging Schröder but squandered a large lead in the opinion polls to lose narrowly.

After Stoiber's defeat in 2002, in addition to her role as CDU chairwoman, Merkel became leader of the conservative opposition in the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag. Her rival, Friedrich Merz, who had held the post of parliamentary leader prior to the 2002 election, was eased out to make way for Merkel.

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Political views

Merkel supports a substantial reform agenda concerning Germany's economic and social system. Merkel is considered to be more pro-free market (and pro-deregulation) than her own party (the CDU); she has advocated changes to German labour law, specifically, removing barriers to firing employees and increasing the allowed number of work hours in a week, arguing that current laws make the country less competitive because companies cannot easily control labour costs at times when business is slow. [1]

Merkel believes there should be a strong transatlantic partnership and German-American friendship. In the spring of 2003, defying strong public opposition, Merkel came out in favour of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, describing it as "unavoidable" and accusing Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of anti-Americanism. This led some critics to characterize her as an American lackey.

She opposes Turkish Membership in the European Union and favours a "privileged partnership" instead. In doing so, she is seen as being in unison with an overwhelming majority of Germans who reject Turkish membership in the European Union, particularly due to fears that large waves of immigration may impose an unbearable burden on Germany and that there would be too much Islamist influence within the EU.

She believes that the existing nuclear power stations should be phased out less quickly than is advocated by the current government.

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Candidacy for Chancellor

Angela Merkel
Enlarge
Angela Merkel

On May 30, 2005, she won the CDU/CSU nomination as challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the SPD in the 2005 national elections. She is designated to be the first female Chancellor in Germany. Her party began the campaign with a 21% lead over the SPD in national opinion polls; however, her personal popularity lagged behind that of the incumbent. Her candidacy suffered in particular when, having made economic competence central to the CDU's platform, she confused gross and net income twice during a televised debate. 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.

However, both Merkel herself and the CDU lost ground significantly after Kirchhof proposed the introduction of a flat tax in Germany, again undermining the party's credibility on economic affairs and convincing many voters that the CDU's platform of deregulation was designed to benefit only the rich. Although Merkel's standing recovered after she distanced herself from Kirchhof's proposals, she remained considerably less popular than Schröder, and the CDU's lead was down to 9% on the eve of the election.

Angela Merkel was also criticized for imitating a speech used by Ronald Reagan in a 1980 US presidential debate for her own television election duel with Gerhard Schröder, the Social Democratic chancellor.

On September 18, Merkel's CDU/CSU and Schröder's SPD went head-to-head in the national elections, with the CDU/CSU winning 35% of the vote to the SPD's 34%. 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, and both Schröder and Merkel claimed victory. A Grand Coalition between the CDU/CSU and SPD faced the challenge that both parties demanded the chancellorship. However, after three weeks of negotiations, the two parties reached a deal whereby Merkel would become Chancellor and the SPD would hold 8 of the 16 seats in the cabinet.[2],[3]

In all likelihood, Merkel will be elected Chancellor by the majority of CDU/CSU and SPD delegates in the newly assembled Bundestag.

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Comparisons

In the English language press, Merkel has been compared by many to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher because both are/were female politicians from centre-right parties, as well as former scientists. Some have referred to her as "Iron Lady" or "Iron Girl" (alluding to Thatcher); despite the name, some political commentators see little similarity between Thatcher's and Merkel's agenda. [4]

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Merkel's future Cabinet

Both the SPD and the CDU/CSU have presented their nominees for the future cabinet of Angela Merkel:

Edmund Stoiber (CSU) was originally nominated for the Economics and Technology post but withdrew November 1. After the defeat of his favored candidate for the position of Secretary General of the SPD, Franz Müntefering has indicated that he will resign as Chairman of the party in November and this has called into question both his nomination to the Cabinet and the prospects of a government led by Merkel.

See: [5]; [6]; [7]

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Quotations

  • Merkel is of the opinion that the EU has failed to define its common interests "for the (commercial) battles of the future" now that Europe's Cold War priorities of keeping "peace and freedom" have been achieved: "This is where I think Europe needs to learn a lot, not to concentrate too much on whether bicycle paths are built the same way in Portugal and north-west Germany."
  • Domestically, Merkel has advocated change in the country's consensual model: "In Germany, we are always facing the danger that we are a little bit too slow. We have to speed up our changes."
  • "The state has to be the gardener, not the fence."
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Published works

  • Angela Merkel, Ilka Böger, Hans Joachim Spangenberg, Lutz Zülicke: "Berechnung von Hochdruck-Geschwindigkeitskonstanten für Zerfalls- und Rekombinationsreaktionen einfacher Kohlenwasserstoffmoleküle und -radikale", Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie. 1982, 263 (3), S. 449-460
  • Angela Merkel, Lutz Zülicke: "Berechnung von Geschwindigkeitskonstanten für den C-H-Bindungsbruch im Methylradikal", Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie. 1985, 266 (2), S. 353-361,
  • Angela Merkel, Lutz Zülicke, "Nonempirical parameter estimate for the statistical adiabatic theory of unimolecular fragmentation carbon-hydrogen bond breaking in methyl", Molecular Physics, 1987, 60(6), 1379-1393,
  • Angela Merkel, Zdenek Havlas, Rudolf Zahradník, "Evaluation of the rate constant for the SN2 reaction fluoromethane + hydride: methane + fluoride in the gas phase", Journal of American Chemical Society, 1988, 110(25), 8355-8359.
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External links

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Notes

^  She has only been designated chancellor in the coalition talks at the moment. She is expected to be elected chancellor by the Bundestag after coalition talks are finished, probably in November.

Preceded by:
Hannelore Rönsch		 Minister for Women and Youth of Germany
1991–1994		 Succeeded by:
Claudia Nolte
Preceded by:
Klaus Töpfer		 Minister for the Environment and Reactor Safety
1994–1998		 Succeeded by:
Jürgen Trittin
Preceded by:
Peter Hintze		 Secretary General of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany
1998–2000		 Succeeded by:
Ruprecht Polenz
Preceded by:
Wolfgang Schäuble		 Chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany
2000–		 Succeeded by:
Incumbent
Preceded by:
Friedrich Merz		 Chairwoman of the CDU/CSU faction in parliament
2002–2005		 Succeeded by:
Incumbent
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Merkel"
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