Who is andrea merkel

The world's crisis manager. Even her staunchest critics admit that Merkel has special powers when it comes to handling crises, having seen Germany through the global financial crisis, the Eurozone debt crisis, and the immigration crisis; with months to go before she steps down, she remains at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

She has often acted as the voice of reason, and as a maker of deals. Political scientists describe her as "calm," "pragmatic," and "diplomatic. Abels said Merkel embodies what most Germans look for in a leader: "While we sometimes look at other countries which have more of the charismatic leaders, we don't want these for ourselves, we've had enough of that in history.

Photos: Angela Merkel's life in pictures. Hide Caption. Merkel, left, attends a New Year's Eve party with friends in Berlin in In , at the age of 23, she married her first husband, Ulrich Merkel. They divorced in , but she kept the name. Merkel poses with her siblings, Marcus and Irene Kasner. Merkel visits a children's home during her campaign to become a member of the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, in Before turning to politics, Merkel had trained as a physician.

She was also a spokeswoman for the "Democratic Awakening," East Germany's opposition movement before reunification. A month after being elected to the Bundestag, Merkel was appointed to Germany's Cabinet in January Merkel looks at Kohl during a conference of the Christian Democratic Union, their political party, in At the time, Merkel was a deputy chairwoman for the party.

Here, she visits a water-control station in Bad Honnef, Germany, in Merkel, as the country's leader on environmental issues, irons wrapping paper to show how it can be recycled. Merkel sits in a "strandkorb," or beach basket, in an undated photo.

In , Merkel became the Christian Democratic Union's first female chairperson. It was the opposition party at the time. Merkel, left, attends the opening of the Wagner Festival, an annual music festival in Bayreuth, Germany, in Merkel spends part of her summer in Langballig, Germany, in Merkel meets Russian President Vladimir Putin in , one of many meetings they would have over the years. Merkel speaks Russian fluently, while Putin speaks German. Merkel speaks in Nuremberg, Germany, ahead of federal elections in Merkel is sworn in as Germany's first female chancellor in November Merkel visits the White House in January A few days later she also visited the Kremlin in Russia.

US President George W. Bush shows off a barrel of pickled herrings he was presented after arriving in Stralsund, Germany, in July Merkel visits troops stationed in Turkey in February Later that year she was re-elected for a third term.

Merkel and Sauer have been married since Merkel was named Time magazine's Person of the Year in Time Editor-at-Large Karl Vick described her as "the de factos leader of the European Union" by virtue of being leader of the EU's largest and most economically powerful member state. Twice that year, he said, the EU had faced "existential crises" that Merkel had taken the lead in navigating -- first the Greek debt crisis faced by the eurozone, and then the ongoing migrant crisis.

Merkel and Obama test a virtual-reality headset at a trade fair in Hanover, Germany, in April Merkel records her annual televised New Year's address in December In this photo provided by the German Government Press Office, Merkel talks with Trump as they are surrounded by other leaders at the G7 summit in June According to two senior diplomatic sources, the photo was taken when there was a difficult conversation taking place regarding the G7's communique and several issues the United States had leading up to it.

Merkel attends a Bundestag session in June She pressed lawmakers to back a tough but humane asylum and migration policy for the European Union.

In this handout photo provided by the German Government Press Office in July , Merkel meets a newborn calf during a visit to the Trede family dairy farm in Nienborstel, Germany. For us, the most important date is the 9th of October, the Monday of the peaceful rally in Leipzig. One month later, the wall came down. She actually took a sauna with a friend while others were crossing, and then joined a crowd.

I picture her quietly taking it all in and assessing what it meant, rather than getting caught up in the euphoria and taking the lead. She likes to test the winds and make her decision like a scientist, based on a careful calculation of all the different factors at play. She was a quantum chemist. She was divorced without children.

I just have to speculate that as a really intelligent, ambitious, and capable person, she saw the fall of the wall as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and showed up at the local CDU [Christian Democratic Union] meeting and from there began to make her way upward. I think she just saw the opportunity and realized that this was her moment, and she took it.

So she made the decision to join politics. She went from one political party to another to check on what she liked best. She disliked, for example, with the Social Democrats, the way that they always addressed each other by first name. That was too casual for her — or always this obligation to sing songs at the meetings.

And the Greens, the same. That was alien to her. Her initial steps led her to a party called the Democratic Awakening, or Demokratischer Aufbruch. This party was, soon after unification, dissolved. With the fall of the wall, her political life began. That extraordinary event changed everything, shaped how she views political developments, and how to handle them.

Even six months before the Berlin Wall fell, most people thought that its fall would be impossible. Merkel looks at a situation and then looks at its possibilities, not its obstacles. Her critics demanded that she take back this statement. But by doing so, they would have taken away her ability to lead. She, however, shaped the situation herself and decided how to handle it.

She reacted the same way as with other topics. Rather than complaining, she looked at the opportunities the situation offered. During the meeting there had been tough conversations between some members of the government about the [Syrian] refugee issue. Some cabinet members asked for closing the borders and building fences. I was vice chancellor and leader of the Social Democratic party. For me, it was her deep conviction that it is her duty as a Christian to help people who are in danger.

And, of course, we did not build new fences in Germany. The second great event of her life, after the fall of the wall, has been something that echoes it: the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees at the borders of Germany. Those two moments are the bookends of her career.

And there, she led and people learned that Merkel has core values, that they were shaped by being a product and a victim of Communism and being an East German, with all that that means. She grew up in a pastoral household. So, yes, the family was watched. She was approached by the East German secret police when she started to study at the age of 17, 18, in Leipzig. So this is all part of her upbringing. It is extremely honest, and you still do feel this honesty when she talks about democracy and liberalism and freedom.

There was nothing for anybody to object to. She was a person whom no one could take offense with. And, as it turned out, she was the major leader of the party.

Look at what bombast led to in Germany. He was certainly bombastic. We will form the government. Mommy Merkel. She hates standing at a party conference giving a speech and being applauded for 20 minutes. You can see she is physically uncomfortable being pushed into the limelight. She prefers to govern quietly and step by step, not by grandiose ideas, approaches, speeches.

She rejects that role, and this makes her suspicious of all of us who expect more of that leadership type. She never has any doubt that she is right. She has the strength to make it through troubles. She went through at least three or four near-death moments in her political life where she was solely alone, especially during the refugee crisis. She never had any doubt that she was doing the right thing. How does this go along with the lack of the wish to show off?

She is also one of the most experienced world leaders, if not the most. Merkel can point to a degree of experience, including with American presidents, that just makes for a sense of judgment and ability to bridge conversations that is in very short supply right now and is really appreciated by politicians who are newer to the game.

A case in point is how she managed to charm Alexis Tsipras of Greece. My sense is that she is very good at three things: reasonableness, listening, and empathy. That creates a certain amount of trust. She is never theatrical. What you see is what you get, and that also inspires trust.

And that, in this day and age, is helpful. She has moved the conservatives closer to the centre, and also closer to the left-wing Greens in certain aspects. Matt Qvortrup : Her main legacy is rescuing the euro, and dealing with the financial crisis of I remember talking to her in Brussels at the time. In response to the crisis, she said she wanted as much market economics as possible, but as much state intervention as necessary.

The German Social Democrats used that line as a slogan in the s. When I put that to her, she said, "I'm not a historian, I'm a pragmatist". The second moment was her response to the Trump years.

She kept the powder dry for liberal internationalism. After the meeting, Mr Obama recounted that he saw a tear in her eye. She was all alone. She kept the ship afloat and, in a way, she's now done her duty. She can go. Charlotte Galpin: Mrs Merkel's tenure is usually described as one characterised by crises. A key moment was the refugee crisis. Facing a humanitarian crisis in the Balkans, Mrs Merkel opened Germany's borders and accepted almost a million refugees during proclaiming " wir schaffen das " - we can manage this.

Germany stood out as one of the few European countries that gave refuge to Syrians fleeing the civil war. Yet, saw the AfD move from an economically liberal, anti-Euro party to a far-right, Islamophobic one.

The AfD's success in the last Bundestag election saw the country's first far-right MPs since the s. First, when Mrs Merkel and her finance minister addressed citizens in to assure them that the government would guarantee their savings, to prevent a much-dreaded bank run.

Second, the high-stakes EU negotiations about debt relief for Greece during the Euro crisis. And finally, Mrs Merkel's decision not to close the border to refugees stranded in Hungary in One should not overlook that Mrs Merkel did not open the border, as this decision is often framed, but decided not to close it.

Dr Katrin Schreiter: One of them was in , when she paved the way for same-sex marriage to go through parliament. Shortly before the election, she gave an interview to a women's magazine. In it, she said voting on these issues was a matter of individual conscience. She basically broke the party line and that opened up the opportunity to pass that law after years of delay. That was a major achievement. One of my favourite quotes is an early one.