'Angela Merkel: Politician Who Can Show a Flash of Steel'

article by MARK LANDLER here.

 

Mrs. Merkel's journey from Protestant minister's daughter in East Germany to the pinnacle of German politics - as the boss of a male-dominated, Catholic-leaning conservative party - is so improbable that it has left political analysts here grasping for what she might do as chancellor.

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Despite her political odyssey, much remains of the regimented young woman who kept her date at the sauna that day. Dogged, earnest, almost willfully bland, Mrs. Merkel is an unlikely historic figure.

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Mrs. Merkel, who has no children, is married to a chemistry professor, Joachim Sauer. He steers clear of her political career. She is said to like cooking for friends, and has a soft spot for the actor Dustin Hoffman.

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Mrs. Merkel was settling in to a career at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin in 1989, when the wall fell. A month later, she joined a coalition of pro-democracy parties. "It was clear they were going to need people," she said in a typically circumspect interview in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

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Mrs. Merkel became the spokeswoman for Lothar de Maizière , a lawyer chosen to wind down the affairs of the East German state. In the first post-reunification election, she won a seat in Parliament, and later a cabinet post in the government of Helmut Kohl.

He famously referred to Mrs. Merkel as "the girl," but rewarded her with a series of powerful posts. She proved herself to be a skillful political player, unafraid to eviscerate rivals. In 1999, after Mr. Kohl had been implicated in a financial scandal, Mrs. Merkel cut loose her old mentor.

"The party must learn to walk," she said at the time. "It must trust itself to fight its political opponents without its old battle horses."

It was a brazen act of rebellion. But within months, Mrs. Merkel was elected party leader. "The episode symbolized that she is capable of making unexpected decisions in difficult situations," Mr. Langguth said.