Merkel - from doctor of science to European leader
Angela Merkel was raised in the East German town of Templin, north of Berlin, where her father served as a Protestant pastor. She was born in 1954 in Hamburg, in the northwest. Merkel excelled in arithmetic and Russian in school to the point that she could subsequently communicate with Russian President Vladimir Putin in his language. She married physicist Ulrich Merkel at the age of 23, while they were both physics students at Leipzig. The union, however, barely lasted four years. 1981 saw their decision to divorce. Together with quantum chemist Joachim Sauer, Angela Merkel made another advancement in 1998.
In 1986, Merkel earned a Ph.D. in quantum chemistry. She then spent some time working at the Berlin-based East German Academy of Sciences. She soon learned, however, that despite her exceptional talent, she could not compete with scientists from the old West Germany once Germany was reunited.
"Merkel has a very good academic record, but the standards simply don't match the West, so she can't compete in research and academia. So Merkel decided to take a risk with her career. how to find the right political party," remarked Stefan Kornelius, Merkel's biographer and political editor of the Suddeutsche Zeitung.
Before joining the CDU, Merkel belonged to the fledgling opposition party known as the Democratic Awakening. Merkel secured a parliamentary seat for the CDU in the first all-Germany general election in 1990, and she afterward advanced quickly within the center-right party. In 1991, she was appointed Minister of Women and Children. Merkel was named minister of the environment three years later, and she was in that post in 2016 for the first UN climate summit. The first global attempts to lower CO2 emissions started in 1995. Merkel was chosen to lead the CDU party in 2000 and was appointed Chancellor of Germany in 2005. She has endured several difficult obstacles during the past 16 years.
