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| Angela Markel |
Dr. Angela Dorothea Merkel (born in Hamburg, Germany, July 17, 1954, age 57 years) is the current Chancellor of Germany. As chairman of the Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU), he also led the coalition in the German parliament along party political camp, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and Free Democratic Party (FDP, the liberal-leaning), which formed after the 2009 Federal General Election.
Merkel - who was elected to Parliament representing Germany Mecklenburg-West Pomerania - has become Chairman of the CDU since 2000 and Chairman of the CDU-CSU party group in parliament in the period 2002-2005.
He was the first female Chancellor of Germany and the first citizen of the former German Democratic Republic who led Germany after the reunification of Germany. He was also the first woman to lead Germany since it became a modern nation-state in 1871. Including him, to 2006, has registered a number of individuals youngest chancellor since World War II. According to Forbes magazine, he is the most powerful woman in the world and the third woman in his capacity as Chairman of the G8. On January 1, 2007, he became the second woman in his position as Chairman of the G8 after Margaret Thatcher.
Background
He was born Angela Dorothea Kasner named in Hamburg as the daughter of Horst Kasner, a Lutheran pastor who came from Berlin, and his wife Herlind Jentzsch, a teacher who came from Danzig. In 1954 his father got a call to serve the church in Quitzow, near Perleberg, and his family moved to Templin. Merkel grew up in rural areas, only 80 km to the north of Berlin, in the communist German Democratic Republic.
Like most students in East Germany, Merkel became an official member of the youth movement and the communist-led Free German Youth (FDJ). Later he became a district board member and secretary for agitation and propaganda in the Academy of Sciences in that organization. However, he does not take a secular ceremony into adulthood Jugendweihe, which is prevalent in East Germany, and instead he got confirmation.
He studied in Templin and at the University of Leipzig, and studied physics from 1973 to 1978. Merkel worked and studied at the Central Institute for chemical physics from the Academy of Sciences from 1978 to 1990. After graduating with a doctorate in physics, he worked in the field of quantum chemistry. His doctoral degree (Dr. rer.nat) obtained in 1986 with a dissertation on the acceleration of particles with simple hydrocarbons.
In 1989, he was involved in the democratic movement is gathering popularity after the fall of the Berlin Wall. He joined the new party Demokratischer Aufbruch. After the first elections and the democratic (and only) in the East German state, he became the deputy spokesperson of the new interim government before reunification under Lothar de Maiziere. At the first general election after the reunification in December 1990, he was elected as a member of the Bundestag from a constituency which includes the districts Nordvorpommern and Rügen, as well as the city of Stralsund. Then joined the CDU party in western Germany and Merkel became the Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl's cabinet. In 1994, he was appointed as Minister for the Environment and Reactor Safety, which makes it more prominent politically. He also has a platform to build his political career. As one of Kohl's golden boy and the youngest minister in his cabinet, he called Kohl as "das Mädchen" ("the girl").
According to an article in Der Spiegel, the background in the former German Democratic Republic is in his favor in the politics of post-reunification. During the first 36 years of his life, he honed his skill in concealing the thoughts and inner feelings - something that is essential for survival in a society because in every room can present a police informant of State Security (Stasi), and especially for a child pastor. Speaking with an almost perfect English and commenting on her background as a "ossi", he said: "Anyone who has a message he wanted to say, do not need make-up". In addition to fluent in English, Angela Merkel is also fluent in Russian.
Being the leader of the opposition
When the Kohl government was defeated in the 1998 election, Merkel was appointed as Secretary General of the CDU. In this position, Merkel's Christian Democrats saw a series of victories in six of the seven provincial elections in 1989 alone, and thus break the force denagn SPD-Green coalition in the Bundesrat, the legislative council representing the Länder. After the party scandal, which involved many prominent CDU (Kohl himself above all that time and the party chairman Wolfgang Schäuble, Kohl substitute its own choice), Merkel criticized the former mentor, Kohl, and demanded a new beginning for the party without Kohl. He was elected to replace Schäuble, and became the first woman to become chairman of his party, on 10 April 2000.
Merkel's election surprised many observers, because his personality is the contrast of the party he leads: Merkel is a Protestant who came from northern Germany is predominantly Protestant, while the CDU is a party that is socially conservative and predominantly male, with a strong Catholic roots, and root strength in the western and southern Germany.
After Merkel elected as chairman of the CDU, he was quite popular among the German missionary societies became Chancellor Gerhard Schröder favorite contender in the 2002 election. However, he himself is not popular within his own party, and in particular with its partner party, (Christian Social Union or CSU based in Bavaria), and therefore removed through political maneuvering by CSU leader Edmund Stoiber Ruediger, who have obtained more opportunities first to challenge Schröder but wasted his lead in the polls to narrowly lost. After the defeat of Stoiber in 2002, in addition to his role as chairman of the CDU, Merkel became leader of the conservative opposition in the lower house of German parliament, the Bundestag. His rival, Friedrich Merz, who has served as pemipin parliament before the 2002 election, was removed to make way for Merkel.
Social Democratic Party's defeat (SPD) Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder at the head of state elections in May 2005 in Nordrhein-Westfalen who are traditional supporters of the CDU party to make a step Schroeder asked for the election. President Horst Kohler and then dissolved the cabinet in July 2005 and decided the election was held on 18 September 2005. In this election, the CDU won 226 parliamentary seats and as many as 222 seats won by the SPD. The parties then agreed to build large coalitions (Große Koalition).
After winning the vote in the Bundestag (German Parliament) on 22 November 2005, he officially served as Chancellor of Germany. Of 614 votes, he won 397 votes to 202 votes against and 12 abstained. With the victory, he was listed as the eighth German government leaders since the end of World War II. He replaces Gerhard Schroeder who is seven years in power with the SPD and the Greens.
Family life
Merkel married twice. From 1977 until their divorce in 1982 she was married to physicist Ulrich Merkel. Since 1998 she married Professor Joachim Sauer, a chemist at Humboldt University (Berlin). Second marriage only after he had lived together for more than a decade, after a conservative cardinal criticized the lifestyle difficult to accept the party's conservative and campaigned for family values and marriage. "We're married," read a small ad in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on December 30, 1998. No one present at the wedding, both of his parents and his companions. "More importantly, my husband and I know it's happening," said Merkel was quoted as saying by Reuters.
Merkel Cabinet
Angela Merkel's cabinet formed on 22 November 2005.
Angela Merkel (CDU) - Chancellor
Franz Muntefering (SPD) - Vice Chancellor and Minister of Labour and Social Issues
Thomas de Maiziere (CDU) - Minister of Special Affairs and Director of the Office of the Chancellor
Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD) - Minister of Foreign Affairs
Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) - Minister of Planning
Franz Josef Jung (CDU) - Minister of Defense
Brigitte Zypries (SPD) - Minister of Justice
Peer Steinbruck (SPD) - Minister of Finance
Michael Glos (CSU) - Minister of Economy and Technology
Horst Seehofer (CSU) - Minister for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture
Ulla Schmidt (SPD) - Minister of Health
Wolfgang Tiefensee (SPD) - Minister of Transport, Construction, Urban Development, and Development of Eastern Germany
Ursula von der Leyen (CDU) - Minister of Families, Seniors Citizens, Women and Youth
Annette Schavan (CDU) - Minister of Research and Education
Sigmar Gabriel (SPD) - Minister of Environment
Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul (SPD) - Minister of Economic Cooperation and Development
