Angela Merkel

Angela Merkel (born in 1954), the first woman chancellor of Germany. Born Angel Dorothea Kasner on 17 July 1954 in Hamburg, she became the first woman chancellor of Germany on 22 November 2005. Her parents moved her to Templin just north of Berlin in East Germany. Her father is Protestant pastor who was a Christian Socialist who believed in the compatibility of Christianity and Marxism.

In 1973 Merkel receives ‘arbiter’ degree in Templin. She enters the University of Leipzig also called Karl Marx University, in the fall.

Merkel studied physics, in which she has a PhD from the University of Leipzig. She applied for a job at technical institute in the GDR but failed to get it after she refused to spy for the secret police.

In 1989 she became involved in the democratic movement and became a member of Democratic Awakening Party to end Communist rule and in the first post-unification election in1990 she was elected to the Bundestag. She served as minster for women and youth in Helmut Kohl’s third cabinet and in 1994 became minister for environment and reactor safety.

After the CDU/CSU coalition was defeated in 1998, she was elected secretary-general of the CDU, before being elected the party’s first ever female Leader in 2000. Following the 2005, federal election she was appointed Germany’s first female Chancellor at the head of a grand coalition consisting of her own CDU party, its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democratic Part of Germany (SPD).
Angela Merkel