Angela Merkel

From Metapedia

Angela Merkel
Chancellor of Germany
Incumbent
Assumed office  22 November 2005
President	Horst Köhler Christian Wulff
Deputy	Franz Müntefering Frank-Walter Steinmeier Guido Westerwelle Philipp Rösler
Preceded by	Gerhard Schröder
Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety
In office 17 November 1994 – 26 October 1998
Chancellor	Helmut Kohl
Preceded by	Klaus Töpfer
Succeeded by	Jürgen Trittin
Minister for Women and Youth
In office 18 January 1991 – 17 November 1994
Chancellor	Helmut Kohl
Preceded by	Ursula Lehr
Succeeded by	Claudia Nolte
Member of the Bundestag
Incumbent
Assumed office  2 December 1990
Preceded by	Constituency established
Constituency	Stralsund-Nordvorpommern- Rügen
Born	17 July 1954 (1954-07-17) (age 62) Hamburg, West Germany (now Germany)
Political party	Christian Democratic Union (1990–present)
Other political affiliations	Democratic Awakening (1989–1990)
Spouse(s)	Ulrich Merkel (1977–1982) Joachim Sauer (1998–present)
Alma mater	University of Leipzig
Profession	Physical chemist
Religion	Protestantism
Signature

Angela Dorothea Merkel (born July 17, 1954 in Hamburg) is a former member of the East German communist party and she became a Christian democrat together with numerous other similar persons after the fall of the Berlin Wall; she is best known as the Chancellor of Germany. Merkel, elected to the German Parliament from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has been the chairman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 10 April 2000, and Chairman of the CDU-CSU (Christian Social Union) parliamentary coalition from 2002 to 2005. She was the favoured young politician of Helmut Kohl.

Merkel has Polish ancestry through her paternal grandfather, Ludwig Kasner, a German national^[1] of Polish origin from Posen.^[2] The family's original name Kaźmierczak was Germanized to Kasner in 1930.^[3][4]

From 2005 to 2009 she led a grand coalition with the Christian Social Union (CSU), its Bavarian sister party, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), formed after the 2005 federal election on 22 November 2005. In the elections of 27 September 2009, her party, the CDU, obtained the largest share of the votes, and formed a coalition government with the CSU and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Her government was sworn in on 28 October 2009.^[5]

In 2007, Merkel was also President of the European Council and chaired the G8. She played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. In domestic policy, health care reform and problems concerning future energy development have thus far been major issues of her tenure.

Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany. In 2007 she became the second woman to chair the G8, after Margaret Thatcher.

Chancellor Merkel is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an International network of current and former women presidents and prime ministers whose mission is to mobilize the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development.^{[citation needed]}

In 2008 Merkel received the Charlemagne Prize "for her work to reform the European Union". The prize was presented by Nicolas Sarkozy. In 2008 she also received, like Helmut Kohl in 1996, the "Europe Award of Merit-Medaille" from B'nai B'rith.

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