Famous Rotarians: Angela Merkel

Posted by Klaus Simon on Jul 14, 2016

Famous Rotarians : Angela Merkel

Honorary Member of the Rotary Club Stralsund-Hansestadt (founded in 1991)

Synopsis

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

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 and soon after was appointed to Helmut Kohl's cabinet as minister for women and youth and later 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, she was chosen party leader, but 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 is also 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 after forming a coalition with the small “ Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP)”. In 2013 she was reelcted for a 3^rd term, but had to share the power with the SPD, because the FDP had missed the 5% mark, which is required to be represented in the Bundestag. Only two post-war German leaders have achieved a third term previously - Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl.

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." Later reports revealed that the NSA may have been surveilling Merkel since 2002.

not happy: cel phone hacked

Image

Chancellor Merkel is seen as more pragmatic than charismatic. Earlier in her political career some saw her as boring, provincial and rather dowdy - an image she tried to shake off with bright, colourful outfits and a new hairstyle.Over time Mrs. Merkel has developed image of a prudent, pragmatic and down-to-earth leader, earning her the nickname "Mutti" – (=Mommy) mother of the nation. Also called "Angie".

In November 2015, Forbes magazine ranked Mrs Merkel the second most powerful person in the world - the highest ranking ever achieved by a woman - and later that year she was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year", citing her role in Europe's crises over migration and Greek debt.

not very flattering !

The USA

U.S. President Barack Obama recent visited to Germany in April 2016 to meet with Chancellor Angela Merkel and other European leaders.

Obama heaped praise on the German leader, telling German newspaper Bild that Merkel was "courageous" in her response to Europe's refugee crisis and he highlighted the importance of the U.S.' relationship with Europe's largest economy.

U.S. Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel

at the opening evening of theHannover Messe trade fair on

April 24, 2016 in Hanover, Germany.

"Germany remains one of America's closest and strongest allies - an indispensable partner not only for our own security and those of our NATO allies, but also for the security, the prosperity and the dignity of people across the whole world," he told Bild in an interview published on Saturday. "With Chancellor Merkel, Germany has raised the stakes and plays an even bigger role on the international stage," he said, with her work to tackle terrorism, reaching a nuclear deal with Iran and her dominating role in the EU.

Obama's trip to Germany had not gone without a hitch, with thousands of protesters gathering in Hanover to protest a planned but unpopular free trade agreement between the U.S. and EU, known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Critics of TTIP fear it threaten public services, the environment and consumers. While in Germany Obama also met with Merkel, French President Francois Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and that time U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron to discuss security and humanitarian concerns over Libya and fragile Syrian peace talks.

The European Union (EU) & The Euro Crisis

Germany - Europe's most powerful economy - is the biggest paymaster for the EU…and in particular …for eurozone bailouts, so Mrs Merkel has to a great extent driven the agenda during the EU's efforts to restore confidence in the euro.She has become the symbol of fiscal austerity, prescribing sweeping budget cuts and tight supervision by the EU as the cure for southern Europe's chronic debts.

Her message is that the heavily indebted countries - Greece, the Republic of Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal - will only become globally competitive by putting their national budgets in order and slashing the money spent on public services.But her role in setting tough conditions for bailing out stricken eurozone "periphery" countries triggered widespread hostility in those EU states. Some protesters in Greece and Spain even likened her to Hitler, suggesting that Germany was again imposing its agenda on the rest of Europe.Critics say her reluctance to resort to bailouts weakened the eurozone's credibility when the debt crisis escalated in 2010. Investors shunned the sovereign debt issued by Greece, Portugal and other ailing eurozone economies, pushing their costs of borrowing to unsustainable levels.Many European politicians believed her insistence on austerity was pushing Europe deeper into recession. Eventually Mrs Merkel decided that fiscal austerity was only part of the solution, and that more fundamental EU reform would be necessary.

The eurozone crisis has tested her talent for consensus-building to the limits - and she never fails to remind Europeans that the crisis is far from over. However,Germany's resilience, low unemployment and healthy export success have boosted her popularity at home, where she is widely seen as a safe pair of hands in tough times.

The Euro plan

So, how does Merkel really want to get out of the euro mess? Does Germany have to pay for it? Get rid of Greece?

More power to Brussels? Definitely not. Merkel is famous for her step-by-step tactics. She never would give a speech outlining a vision for Europe or at least a two year plan. This woman is not for benchmarking. She doesn't want to leave any traces of her political game plan since this would only help her opponents. But she has a plan, written down in summer 2011 by one of her advisors, a scribble on a single sheet of paper. In this plan she accepts that key policies within the EU member states have to be watched, governed and controlled more closely and jointly in order to keep the currency alive: budgets, spending, education and research, retirement, social benefits. After all a joint currency will not work without a joint fiscal and economic policy. Will that mean more Brussels? The opposite is true. Merkel is aware of the European public being tired of the commission and the lack of accountability. So for the time being, she'd prefer national governments writing the rules and sticking to them. If someone wants more Europe, they have to come up with a pretty good idea. Merkel might even be willing to talk about a new architecture for all this coordinating – but certainly not before the German elections.

The Refugee Crisis

Merkel has played a leading role in Europe's reaction to the migrant crisis, announcing that Germany would welcome refugees fleeing Syria's civil war. The German government says 1.1 million people claimed asylum in the country in 2015.

Her decision was driven by humanitarian considerations and by the fact that over-aged Germany with its low birthrate badly needs immigrants to fill the an ever widening gap.The decision to welcome Syrians won her plaudits in some quarters but sparked a backlash in others, with some senior ministers openly questioning the approach. Also other members of the EU, mostly small Eastern-European countries are categorically opposed to accepting refugees from the Mid-East and Africa. Hungary was leading the pack when it built barbed wired fences to protect its boarders.

In Germany street protests organized by the right-wing Pegida movement has drawn thousands opposed to "Islamisation" of Germany.Anxiety over migration rose further following the 2015 New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne, when hundreds of women were robbed and sexually assaulted by crowds of men of North African origin who had gathered near the city's main train station.The Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party has won seats in five regional parliaments since 2014, and is making further inroads with its anti-migration message.

Angela Merkel’s handling of the refugee crisis left marks on her popularity record. Whereas she enjoyed highest ratings (only matched by Germany’s first Chancellor Konrad Adenauer) during the first 10 years of her Chancellary, the tides have since turned against her . Inviting over 1 Million refugees – Merkel’s famous proclamation :” Wir schaffen das ! “ (“We can handle this”) caused wide spread outcries and will enter the history books as the mile stone, which shifted her acceptance into “reverse”…from all time highs to devastating lows so far unknown in her party’s history.

not happy: in the Bundestag

Some more things you want to know about Angela Merkel

Angela Merkel is Europe's most successful elected female politician yet she remains an enigma. Angela Merkel is in line to become Europe's longest serving elected female head of government, eclipsing Margaret Thatcher along the way. And yet there is still plenty of mystery about a woman who charted an unlikely course from research science in the former GDR to the leader of Europe's most powerful nation.

Not only has she fought off all (male) competitors in her party, she has mastered the German political system, wrestled down two parties in coalition governments and seemed to be getting only stronger in Europe. But behind the exterior lie secrets that are only now coming to light.

Angela Kazmierczak ?

Angela Merkel is indeed "a quarter Polish". Now we know: Not only was her grandfather of Polish origin, the chancellor almost was born Angela Kazmierczak. Her grandfather was a Ludwig Kazmierczak, born 1896 in Poznan – then part of the German Reich. The family was proud of its Polish roots. Obviously not grandpa Ludwig who emigrated to Berlin when Poznan became Polish again after the first world war. He married a Berlin woman, and they had a son – Horst Kazmierczak, Angela's father. The family decided to cut their Polish roots in the early 30s. The Kazmierczaks followed a common fashion and Germanised their family name to Kasner. Father and son converted from Catholicism to the Protestant church – something Merkel didn't know until recently. That was a puzzling discovery for a woman who grew up in a rectory and whose Protestantism is key to understanding her personality. When Merkel's Polish past became public, a second cousin immediately invited her for dinner. Watch out, she might show up one day in the Alley of the Cosmonauts in Poznan.

Plum cake

Angela Merkel is said to pride herself as a good baker. In her early public life, Angela Merkel loved to brag about her cooking and baking qualities. Indeed, there is a lot of praise for her potato soup, her beef loaf and especially her plum cake. The cake soon became a measure of how much time she was able to afford her private life and her husband. He loved thecake, she really didn't. As a junior minister under Helmut Kohl, she was still able to have two or three baking weekends eachplum season. The plum cake stories trickled away when she became chancellor. Now there are the occasional pictures of the most powerful woman in Europe queuing at the cashier at her neighbourhood grocer. The shopping list is eagerly investigated, but butcher and the fishmonger keep tight lipped.

Dog days

Was Koni Putin's idea of a joke? Merkel and Vladimir Putin go back further than you might think. He was a KGB agent in East Germany when the wall fell and he certainly wasn't happy about it. Perhaps the rivalry has its roots in the dark shadows of the cold war. Merkel, the greatest benefactor of the 89-revolution, got a taste of his intimidating tactics very early. When she visited the Kremlin for the first time as chancellor, Putin gave her a plush toy dog as a gift. Merkel became deeply afraid of dogs after she was bitten in the mid 90s. But Putin didn't stop there. The next meeting, at his summer residence on the Black Sea, he let in his black Labrador Koni, an intimidating species. Merkel sat frozen, and pictures show Putin with a sardonic grin on his face, legs widely stretched.

Inca hoots

After a meeting with Merkel, a prime minister from a small south-eastern European country told the stunned media, that the chancellor sees similarities between the EU and the ancient Inca. The European value system too could suddenly disappear without trace. Merkel sometimes uses the Inca story to shock, although nobody expects to see tourists climbing the savaged ruins of Brussels in the near future. But the chancellor does indeed worry about the strength of the western system. Democracy, liberal market-economies, the western legal system are battling the modern version of the cold war against authoritarian, non-democratic but economically strong systems. Merkel has seen a state collapsing in her lifetime, and she wants to spare her beloved west the same fate. That's the reason for her call to competitiveness and recovery in Europe – and she's afraid that Europe doesn't get it.

Easy Cameron, easy go

Recently resign the UK’s Premier Minister David Cameron saw himself as a close ally of Merkel. But the feeling might not be reciprocated. Cameron wouldn't be the first male politician to misread the chancellor – a dangerous mistake. Merkel's path is marked with the corpses of those males getting her wrong. And Cameron was the third prime minister she had to deal with in her time in office. So for clarification: Yes, she liked his policies, his global vision, his stands on competitiveness and the Asian challenge. She even admires his debating skills as she generally loves the British political system. But she is also keen on changing the treaties, but only if there is need for a change. Losing the entire EU system in one of those many referendums in the aftermath of a treaty change would be too dangerous. So Merkel is a fan of the newly discovered intergovernmentalism – treaties between the member states instead of ever more integration favouring the commission. Cameron got a taste when he was asked to join the fiscal pact at the height of the euro crisis. He decided against.

Now Britain is out.

And Merkel couldn't care less. Could she ?

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