CHANCELLOR: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel

The daughter of a Lutheran pastor growing up behind the Iron Curtain in east Germany, Angela Merkel was the first girl in her class to wear blue jeans, symbol of the west. She gained the highest honours at school and university but turned down an academic job because she would be expected to inform on her colleagues to the Stasi, the dreaded secret police. Personal integrity was the bedrock of her life from the beginning. Working as a research chemist, where she met her first husband, she abandoned her academic career after the fall of the Berlin Wall in order to become a politician and after joining various freedom groups she ended up in the CDU, the Christian Democratic Union, rising to become opposition leader and then Chancellor during the 16 years between 2005 and 2021. A protégé of Helmut Kohl, she was the party's first female leader and the country's first female Chancellor. With political views strongly influenced by her Protestant faith she championed women's issues and globalisation, controversially welcoming immigration and insisting that Germany could make it work economically. Merkel was driven by the legacy of the Holocaust and was determined that Germany would never again demonise any ethnic group, and this was one of her bonds with President Obama. Initially suspicious of Obama's showy rhetoric, the exact opposite of her own low-key style, Merkel came to understand that like her he was a genuine champion of the outsider, wanting everyone to have a fair chance in life. Some of Merkel's decisions were highly controversial, for instance her support for President Bush in the 2003 Iraq war and its aftermath, while her policy of creating closer ties with Russia backfired with the annexation of Crimea in 2014. But Merkel was above all a politician who was trusted and whose integrity commanded universal respect. Paperback, 344pp, colour photos.