She countered the narrow world of the GDR by using the GDR's own methods. This is exemplified by one episode in Angela Kasner's life, when she was about to leave school. The pupils in the final year at the Hermann Matern Grammar School in Templin held a meeting to organize a cultural festival. After much hesitation – after all, they already had their Abitur and were probably in a rebellious mood – a small group decided to stage a performance with an international flavour. It must have been quite a striking performance, because the school authorities, intent on toeing the party line, were quick to realize its hidden meaning: the final-year pupils were collecting money as specified, but not for a Vietnamese resistance group that was fighting the USA. Instead they were collecting for the Mozambique freedom movement Fremilo, which certainly had socialist credentials, but their opposition to the colonialists inevitably brought them into conflict with the Portuguese occupiers. It was easy to see a parallel with Soviet troops in the GDR. Then the students performed the poem ‘Mopsleben’ (‘Life of a Pug Dog’), by the nonsense poet Christian Morgenstern, which warns us:
Go carefully, Mankind, when you decide to stand tall,
Or you'll end up as a pug dog, hanging on a wall.
They closed the performance by singing the ‘Internationale’ in English, the language of the class enemy.
But this was all too obvious: the performance went beyond what was permissible, creating difficulties for the school authorities and for the pupils themselves, who risked losing their university places through such an act of rebellion. Horst Kasner intervened on his daughter's behalf, using Church channels to gain access to the highest authorities – and so Angela was able to begin studying physics at the Karl Marx University in Leipzig in 1973.
This anecdote shows that Merkel had developed a marked tendency for irony quite early in life, and has always possessed a mischievous sense of humour. Friends at the time found her open and positive. She has retained her love of double meanings and cutting remarks. Even today no one would deny that she has a sharp sense of humour, although she rarely displays it in public. What is surprising is that Merkel is regarded as being extremely serious, sometimes even grouchy. She keeps her facial expressions under strict control – but the mask sometimes slips and she makes a face that betrays what she is actually thinking.
In the early years of her chancellorship, when she was less cautious, she would sometimes imitate people she had met – the Pope, the Prime Minister of China, the French President – thereby revealing their weaknesses. “For her,” Die Zeit magazine once wrote, “comedy is what is left unsaid.” She has been quoted as saying that her favourite political satire is Heinrich Böll's short story ‘Dr Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen’ (‘The Collected Silences of Dr Murke’). With dry wit, she transfers the favourite law of physics into everyday political life: “There is no depth without mass.” Even now she assesses people according to whether they have a sense of humour or not. Her favourite jokes are full of biting social satire. One of the Chancellor's regular observers once wrote, “She has mastered the art of silent mockery.” Her taste for irony and finely judged humour has seldom been clearer than during a newspaper interview in which she was asked the loaded question: “And so what strikes you most about Germany today?” Back came the answer, “Nice draught-proof windows.”
Her studies in Leipzig, followed by the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, soon created a distance between her and the family home in Templin. Once again Angela achieved excellent results – she found her studies easy, enjoyed life in the capital, and was happy to join in with and organize events among her circle of friends. As a student in the big city she had an amusing experience while working in a laundry, when she had to iron Russian Army shirts (“Ironing never hurt anyone,” she said). More appealing were all the new opportunities to discover the world.
She went to Prague again, as well as to Russia. She made several trips to the Heyrovský Institute in Prague to do research, sometimes for months at a time. She has remained friends with her tutor, Rudolf Zahradník, and visits him whenever she is in Prague. On a recent visit, in April 2012, she was reminded of the legendary Vindobona express that ran on the Berlin-Prague-Vienna line and was notorious for always being late. The paternal Zahradník had advised her to keep calm. “‘You're aware that we're taking part in an experiment that will never succeed, called socialism,’” she said, quoting him. “‘The two of us know that already, but the others haven't realized yet.’”
In 1974 she went with some fellow students on an exchange programme to the Soviet Union, travelling to Leningrad and Moscow to meet Russian physics students. Among the group was the man who would become her first husband, Ulrich Merkel. Two years later they moved in together. Like so many GDR students looking for somewhere to work and, above all, live, Angela Kasner married the physicist Ulrich Merkel at the end of her time at university. This allowed them to be allocated a shared home, and the State would not separate a couple who were looking for work.
The wedding took place in the Chapel of St George in Templin. Angela took her husband's name, which has now become a household name in international politics. It was 1977 and she was twenty-three years old. Four years later the marriage broke down: husband and wife had grown apart. Almost overnight Angela Merkel moved out of the couple's apartment in Berlin, leaving behind a shocked Ulrich Merkel. They divorced in 1982.
After the divorce, Merkel set off on what was probably her most adventurous journey so far – with some friends she hitch-hiked through southern Russia to Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan; in Tbilisi she spent the night in the railway-station hostel. They avoided any brush with the police by claiming to be in transit to Romania or Bulgaria. Merkel could talk herself out of any difficulty. Her command of Russian was a great help, but she also managed to practise her English during this period by reading technical literature or the Morning Star. This mouthpiece of the British Communist Party could be found at certain news-stands in East Berlin once a week, and those who were up early enough were able to get a copy.
In the working group on quantum chemistry at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry, to begin with Merkel was the only woman in that field. Women mostly worked elsewhere, usually in administration. She had no opportunity to go to the West – only twenty-four scientists at the Institute were issued with travel permits that allowed them to leave the GDR. The numbers were increased in 1988–89, and more scientists joined the group. One of them, Dr Joachim Sauer, was given permission to leave the GDR at that time. His name first appeared in connection with Merkel's in the acknowledgements to her doctoral thesis in 1984. She would marry him fifteen years later.
Angela Merkel fulfilled her passion for travel in other ways: with the help of the travel bureaux of the Free German Youth organization FDJ, Youth Tourist, she obtained a visa for Poland, where she managed to find propaganda material produced by the trade-union movement Solidarnosć – a dangerous activity, since martial law had been in force in Poland since 1981 and the borders were closed. Former colleagues at the Academy later spoke of her deep interest in political discussions. Even though the Stasi had its eyes and ears everywhere, the scientists were obviously aware of their special position and felt they could allow themselves to take some small risks.
Merkel generally describes the bond between her colleagues as being strong and close. It was nothing unusual for them to spend leisure time together – the GDR set great store by close links within the working environment. Exchange programmes at the Academy took Merkel back to the Soviet Union. Officially, long-distance journeys could only be made as a group and for professional purposes; anything else had to remain as pipe dream and wishful thinking. Ten years later the journalist Hugo Müller-Vogg asked her how she had coped with not being able to travel to the West. “I do rather wonder now how I managed,” she replied, “particularly living here in Berlin.”
Even while still a child Merkel had developed a strategy for dealing with restrictions: she made comparisons. Anyone
who met her as a young woman spoke of the need she felt for a yardstick. She used the same method time and again, for example when she produced her famous tables during the euro crisis and showed her colleagues on the European Council comparative curves to illustrate the course the crisis was taking. Merkel compares systems, political procedures, solutions. Her computer-like brain is always comparing different models, testing intellectual capacity, making judgements. “Whenever I had contact with people from the West,” she told Müller-Vogg, “I was always trying to find out if I could keep up with them intellectually. And the fact that I could made it easier for me to come to terms with not being able to go to the Mediterranean.” Here we see her again, the analyst systematically dealing with what could have been an inferiority complex. Did she also manage to overcome her desire to travel, which obviously concealed dreams of freedom? The answer lies in a notable journey that she made during the final years of the GDR.
She was given permission for this unusual trip in 1986; the occasion was the wedding of a female cousin in Hamburg. Merkel hadn't been to the West since the building of the Berlin Wall. Yet she lived with the firm conviction that when she was sixty she would be able to realize her dream and fly to the United States. Sixty was the pensionable age, when the GDR allowed women to travel anywhere in the world. At home in Templin there had been family discussions: should Angela make an official application for an emigration permit? The older she grew, the more pressing it became, but her parents didn't like the idea. Her friend Joachim Sauer, now her partner, had a quite different view. He is described by those who know the couple as the main source of support for her inner convictions; although he sometimes loses his temper, he can also have a calming role. She always listens to his opinions, and when it came to her wish to go to the West his advice was this: if you can't stand it here any longer, then do whatever you want.
In the end Merkel didn't apply for an emigration permit. She once said that only the certainty that she could get a permit whenever she wanted made the GDR more tolerable. The first thing she did now was to board a train for her native city of Hamburg. We have no details of the cousin's wedding, but afterwards she went on to Karlsruhe to visit a professor in her field of study, and then to see a colleague in Konstanz, on the border with Switzerland. She never said much about the journey, apart from a few anecdotes about the cleanliness of West German Intercity trains. But there is one remark that Merkel likes to repeat: “It was at that wedding that I realized that the socialist system wasn't going to last.” The journey from Hamburg to Karlsruhe would also have provided good reasons to reach such a conclusion – the railway line near Kassel had a marvellous view of the watchtowers on the border and the area known as the Death Strip, where armed guards were posted, although this time on the Western side.
The system lasted for another three years, and then Angela Merkel was catapulted out of her leisurely life at the Institute and into another orbit. For thirty-five years she had lived in the GDR as if in a cocoon: she had adjusted to it, and could live and work there with as much intellectual freedom as was possible. The parsonage was an oasis within the system, while the Uckermark and its isolated landscapes formed a peaceful backdrop. As a child the highly intelligent Angela Kasner was given every encouragement and also learnt how to motivate herself. Her enthusiastic and sociable nature helped her to overcome adverse conditions, while her family bolstered her self-confidence. And then there were the parcels of jeans from the West – presents sent regularly by family members there.
Angela Merkel was no freedom fighter, not cut out for revolution, although she was in touch with Church circles in Berlin. She lacked the courage for open revolt, and yet she wasn't prepared simply to accept the Regime. She didn't want to expose herself. This was the reason she chose – just like her brother – to study physics: because the subject offered the most freedom and opportunities for self-development. She was among the best in her age group, and was shrewd enough not to get involved with the Communist Party – although, conversely, as a pastor's daughter and emerging young scientist, the Party gave her scope to do as she liked. Within strict limits she was allowed to see the world. Now it was time for the world to open up to her. And her exploratory journeys through the landscape of political parties in the final days of the GDR in the late autumn of 1989 came at just the right moment.
When the Berlin Wall came down on 9th November that year, Angela Merkel was in the sauna with a friend, something that would earn her much mockery later. And yet nothing could have been more typical of her: working out the plan in advance, checking out the lie of the land, not rushing things. After her sauna she went to the Bornholmer Straße crossing to the West, and at one point found herself in an apartment belonging to total strangers, where there were drinks and a telephone. After that she went home. The next day she and her sister Irene set off again, this time to the Kurfürstendamm, the shopping street that in the GDR had always represented the glamour of the West. But then the politics began.
Merkel could have ended up in the SPD, the Social Democratic Party of Germany, or Bündnis 90, an organization of three non-communist groups that later merged with the West German Green Party. She was interested in all the political parties, but her instincts were sound. She could appreciate the warm companionship of the SPD, but there was too much egalitarianism for her liking. Bündnis 90 didn't suit her basic convictions, especially where nuclear power and questions of pacifism and defence were concerned. In those first chaotic weeks many things happened by chance, and it was chance that brought her into contact with Pastor Rainer Eppelmann, whom she knew through the Church. In turn this led her to the DA (Democratic Awakening) party. She liked the name, and the fact that she found so much there that was incomplete, waiting to be shaped. During those weeks the Democratic Awakening Party needed one thing above all else: people with sound principles, an overview of what was happening and who were capable of organizing. Angela Merkel was a good organizer, so she took leave from the Academy, and by February 1990 was installed on the third floor of the new offices of the House of Democracy, on the corner of Friedrichstraße and Französische Straße.
Anyone who was in East Berlin at the time and followed politics will remember the young woman typing press releases and writing notes just inside the door. Quite by chance, Merkel became the press officer for the Democratic Awakening Party, because the chairman Wolfgang Schnur wasn't able to meet Western journalists on a particular day and sent her instead. The GDR was collapsing, the first free elections to the People's Chamber were to be held in March, politics in Germany was racing ahead. In February the East German section of the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), the DA and the German Social Union merged into the Alliance for Germany. When the final election to the People's Chamber came down clearly in favour of the CDU and its chairman Lothar de Maizière, it was clear that the DA, as a small centre-right party, would either have to attach itself to the great tanker of the West German CDU party, or sink beneath the waves of these stormy times.
Angela Merkel didn't like the idea of being submerged. She was now working politically with all her might, and had three aims. She wanted the country to be reunified as soon as possible, she wanted a market economy, and she wanted to sit in the Bundestag, the parliament of West Germany and soon to be the parliament of a reunified Germany.
Then one day the phone rang, and Hans-Christian Maaß asked whether she would like to act as the spokesperson for Lothar de Maizière. Maaß was one of the Western advisers who could be seen everywhere in East Berlin at the time. They had been sent by the sister parties in the West with the task of giving guidance to politicians in the GDR – and, from the perspective of the CDU, the ruling party in the Federal Republic, to introduce as smoothly as possible decisions that would be welcomed in Bonn, the seat of the West German government. Reunification was to go ahead; in West Germany it was now recognized that timing was important. The situation was becoming volatile: there might be unrest or civil resistance in the grass root
s of the country. Partners in the Alliance or supporters might try to put obstacles in the way of unification. So there had to be a government soon, and the party had to act.
While the new East German government was being formed, it became clear that there should be someone from the DA working closely with the first freely elected Prime Minister of the GDR. When Merkel was offered the post of deputy government spokeswoman by Maaß, she discussed it with her partner Joachim Sauer, who had just fulfilled a long-held ambition by taking up an academic post in California. After some thought, Merkel agreed to take the job – and then flew to Sardinia with Joachim Sauer. When she got back from holiday the government was already installed; the coalition treaty was signed on Maundy Thursday 1990: the Prime Minister and the twenty-three ministers took their oaths, and the cabinet held its first meeting on 18th April, although she didn't receive her official appointment until later. She skipped her swearing-in ceremony.
In her new role, Merkel was deputy to Matthias Gehler, de Maizière's government spokesman. So she wasn't one of the inner circle, but witnessed many of the historical decisions that were made almost daily during the last six months of the GDR. Her job brought her into constant contact with journalists, but she also kept a watchful eye on her position within the Democratic Awakening party. She had no illusions about its future: it would merge into the CDU. Every morning the spokesman or his deputy would brief the prime minister and his closest advisers about what was in the press. It wasn't long before de Maizière made it clear that he was more than satisfied with Merkel's precise manner of expressing herself in the so-called kitchen cabinet, her gift for grasping a point quickly, her efficiency and her powers of interpreting the political situation.
Although Merkel wasn't making political decisions, she participated in the debates on party policy that took place under the last government of the GDR. She had access to the Prime Minister, particularly during foreign trips. De Maizière travelled a great deal – much to the annoyance of the West German Chancellor, Helmut Kohl. Visiting foreign countries attracted attention and added to the East German Prime Minister's political clout. Since there were disagreements, even in the West, as to the conditions of the reunification of Germany, unexpected opportunities emerged, and de Maizière did his best to capitalize on them. Not only that, the new politicians in East Berlin were enjoying their role and the importance that they found they now had, particularly abroad. Kohl was especially unhappy about de Maizière's visit to the French President, François Mitterrand: he feared that this rapport between East Germany and France might cause unnecessary problems and undermine his authority.
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