She has quietly blazed trails for the past four years as Germany’s first female chancellor and as the first to hail from the former Communist East. She’s the “most powerful woman in the world” according to Forbes and, in her slow, plodding way, has emerged as the de facto leader of the European Union.
Outside of Germany, however, there’s been scant interest in Angela Merkel, the earnest, apple-cheeked 55-year-old leader of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)—but for when she brushed off former president Bush’s frat-boy neck rub at the 2006 G8 Summit or showed off impressive decolletage in Norway in 2008: “Merkel’s Weapons of Mass Distraction!” crowed the British tabloid Daily Mail.
Her re-election to another four-year-term in September barely registered in North America, which tends to think of Europe’s most populous country and largest economy in terms of BMW, not CDU. Far more ink is spilled on beleaguered male EU leaders: Britain’s Gordon Brown, whose Labour Party is slowly committing hara-kiri; French President Nicolas Sarkozy, with his decorous wife and ADD flitting from issue to issue; and Italy’s scandal-prone PM, Silvio Berlusconi.
The effective Merkel, who spends her leisure time hiking in the Alps and attending the Bayreuth opera festival, is glaringly dull in contrast. Her husband, chemistry professor Joachim Sauer, is so publicity-shy he’s known in Germany as the “Phantom of the Opera.” Slate dubbed her the “anti-Obama,” citing her “zero charisma, zero glamour, beige pantsuits, and a spouse who rarely appears in public.”
Clearly it’s a winning formula for the female politician: at last Merkel is having her breakout moment, to judge from the thunderous standing ovations that greeted her address to a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress in November. She pressed for an agreement on global warming and stressed the need to break down even more walls, a reference to the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s fall that again put her in the international spotlight. Days later, she became the first German leader to commemorate Armistice Day on French soil. Standing beside Sarkozy at the Arc de Triomphe, she expressed her nation’s contrition in a conciliatory speech that was classic Merkel: “When there is antagonism between us, everybody loses,” she said. “When we are united, everybody wins.”
Merkel’s sudden star turn is the most recent in a year that has seen older women reveal unexpected “wow” factor to a surprised audience. Consider Susan Boyle, whose talent was greeted with the shock one would rightfully associate with the spectacle of a chimp reciting T.S. Eliot. The documentary The September Issue pulled back the curtain at Vogue to show the brilliant machinations of its boldly innovative creative director, the 68-year-old Grace Coddington. Julie & Julia elicited amazement by portraying the matronly Julia Child as having a far more vibrant sex life than the younger protagonist.
But in a year that saw once-invisible women take the spotlight, no one shone more than Merkel, whose personal history mirrors national aspirations. Born in West Germany, she was raised in the country’s East. She knew a deprivation tinged with privilege due to her father’s position as a Lutheran pastor. The family had two cars—unheard of in a place where people could wait decades for one—and their library was stocked with Western books, banned to most East Germans. A brilliant student, she studied physics at the University of Leipzig, financing her education as a cocktail waitress. In 1977, she married fellow student Ulrich Merkel (she divorced him in 1982 and married Sauer in 1988). After receiving a Ph.D. in 1978, she took a job as a quantum chemist in East Berlin.
Merkel’s political life began quietly: swept up in Germany’s budding democracy movement, she joined the CDU in 1990, two months before Germany’s reunification. Merkel rose in the ranks quietly yet steadily, mentored by newly elected chancellor Helmut Kohl, who referred to her as “the girl” and appointed her women and youth minister in 1991 and environment minister in 1994. When a slush-fund scandal rocked the party in 1999, Merkel alone had the courage to tell Kohl to quit. The next year, she succeeded him as the CDU’s first female leader.
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