Today, Sunday, September 26, 2021, the federal elections were held in Germany, in light of a great competition between the candidate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU) Armin Laschet and the candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Olaf Schultz.

These elections did not include the name of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the former leader of the Christian Democratic Union, who today brings the curtain down on her long political career after nearly 16 years in the position she assumed as the first woman in German history.

In this report, we learn about Merkel, who has become known as "Mote", which means "mother" in German, and who grew up in East Germany with a communist ideology, and although the doctor of chemistry is a Protestant religion, she imposed herself at the head of a Catholic party, most of whose leaders are from West Germany.

Birth and upbringing

July 17, 1954: Angela Dorothea Merkel was born and raised in Hamburg, northern Germany.

She specialized in physics during her studies (1973-1978), and scored superiority in the Russian language and mathematics, then joined the Center for Physical Chemistry at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin until 1990, when she holds a doctorate in chemistry.

Merkel joined the "Renaissance of Democracy" party in 1989, and rose to become a spokeswoman for the last democratically elected government of the former German Democratic Republic under Lothar de Maiziere.

3 decades in the political niche

1990: She began her political career during the unification of the two parts of Germany alongside former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who discovered her abilities and was nicknamed "The Little Girl".

1991: Merkel was appointed Minister of Women and Youth in the Federal Government under the leadership of Chancellor Kohl.

1994: She became Minister of the Environment.

1998: After her party lost the federal election, Merkel was elected to the post of General Secretary of the Christian Democratic Union.

April 10, 2000: Benefited from hidden funding scandals affecting the CDU to lead the party in the place of Wolfgang Schäuble.

2002: Following her election as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, opinion polls show that many Germans would like to see her as a major challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, but she is later politically defeated by Christian Social Party leader Edmund Stoiber, for whom she eventually relinquished the honor. Schroeder's Challenge.

2002: After Stoiber's defeat by Schroeder, in addition to her role as leader of the CDU, Merkel becomes the leader of the opposition in parliament.

US invasion of Iraq

2003: Merkel supports the US invasion of Iraq, describing it as "inevitable" and accusing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of being hostile to the United States.

2003: Merkel also opposed the government's support for Turkey's accession to the European Union, preferring a "privileged partnership" instead.

November 22, 2005: Merkel became the first woman to hold the position of chancellor in Germany, the first to rule a major European country since the era of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and the first female head of government to hail from the former East Germany.

2007: Merkel chaired the European Council and the Group of Eight, and is the second woman to hold this position.

Merkel played a key role in the negotiations of the Lisbon Treaty and the Berlin Declaration.

2009: She led an alliance with the "Free Democratic Party" (FPD), and her party obtained the largest share of the votes in the federal elections, and formed a coalition government with the support of the Free Democrats.

September 9, 2010: Merkel honored the Danish painter Kurt Westergaard, whose insulting cartoons of the Holy Prophet Muhammad - may God bless him and grant him peace - aroused widespread anger in the Islamic world in 2005.

- Condemned an American church's plan to burn copies of the Holy Qur'an on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

September 2013: Merkel's party wins the federal election by a landslide with 41.5% of the vote, and forms the second major government coalition with the SPD, after the Free Democratic Party loses all its representation in the Bundestag.

Merkel continued at the head of the chancellery for a third term, but without obtaining an absolute majority in Parliament. She was the first European leader to be re-elected since the financial and economic crisis that afflicted the European Union.

2015: Merkel made the most important decision in her political life - as seen by many foreigners and immigrants - to completely open the borders to more than a million refugees coming through the Balkans and Turkey to Germany.

November 20, 2016: Merkel announces that she will seek re-election for a fourth and final term.

September 24, 2017: The Merkel-led coalition leads the general election results.

Despite losing some support, Merkel - Europe's longest-serving leader - joined the late Helmut Kohl - her spiritual guide who reunited Germany - and Konrad Adenauer - who led Germany's rebirth after World War II - as the only three chancellors to win 4 general elections.

2018: Merkel's coalition lost the local elections in Bavaria and Hesse to the opposition "Green" party and the "Alternative for Germany" party, which was the biggest loss for the popular parties in Germany since the end of World War II.

- These two losses led to being the straw that broke the camel's back, and ultimately lead to the chancellor retracting her desire to lead the party at the end of the year, as well as relinquishing the chancellery at the end of the current parliamentary period.

December 7, 2018: Merkel makes her last speech as chairperson of the CDU, with Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer elected as her successor.

Her term in the Chancellery officially ended on September 26, 2021.

Honors and Awards

August 2008: I received the "People Award" in Europe, granted by the German "Passau Publishing Group" to political figures who contribute to building bridges of understanding between peoples and establishing peace.

For several years, the American economic magazine "Forbes" chose her to be at the fore in the list of the most powerful woman in the world.

2013: She won the Medal of Excellence for the most influential person in the world during the vote launched by the International Council for Human Rights, Arbitration, and Political and Strategic Studies.

personal life

1977: Angela Kasner, 23, marries physics student Ulrich Merkel, from whom she takes the family name.

1982: The marriage ended in divorce.

December 30, 1998: She married Joachim Sauer, a professor of quantum physics.

She has no children, but her husband Joachim has two adult sons from a previous marriage.