Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel turns 70 today

BONN: After 16 years in power, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel did not seek re-election in September 2021.

Born Angela Kasner on July 17, 1954 in the West German port city of Hamburg, she moved with her family to East Germany when she was only a toddler after her father, a Protestant pastor, was offered a job in the state of Brandenburg, north of Berlin.

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She grew up in the town of Templin, in the Uckermark region with its lakes and rolling hills.

Merkel studied physics at the University of Leipzig, earning a doctorate, and became politically active after the Berlin Wall fell, joining the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) in 1990.

Only a year later she became the youngest member of Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s cabinet as minister for women and youth. In 1994, she became German environment minister and in 2000 she was elected CDU leader after the party and Kohl were rocked by a scandal over illegal funding.

In 2005, Merkel became Germany’s first woman chancellor and the country’s first leader to have grown up in the former communist East Germany, when her conservatives narrowly defeated Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SPD).

As head of Germany’s first right-left “grand coalition” since the 1960s, Merkel had steered a centrist course at home and earned a reputation as a talented mediator at the international level. She brokered an elusive deal on the EU budget shortly after taking office and in 2007 went on to forge compromises on climate change at both the EU and G8 levels as well as a deal on the European bloc’s reform treaty, earning the nickname “Summit Queen.”

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Merkel divorced her first husband Ulrich Merkel in 1982 and has been married to publicity-shy chemistry professor Joachim Sauer since 1998. She is a fan of classical music, regularly attending the annual Bayreuth opera festival, and enjoys hiking in the Alps in her free time.