ANGELA MERKEL, who was Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021 and often called the leader of the free world, here tells her own story. The daughter of a Lutheran pastor who chose to live in Communist East Germany, she grew up with all the restrictions of that regime. Her Christian home made her suspect, but her parents did their best to keep out of trouble so that she could obtain a good education.
This she did, obtaining a doctorate in quantum chemistry and becoming a research scientist, despite refusing to spy for the Stasi on the way. With the end of the Cold War, she became involved in protest movements and started to engage in politics. Although she does not give the reason for this, the motive was clearly freedom, the title of her book and the subject of an epilogue at the end, in which she writes about what it means to her. She was clearly a spirited young woman, seriously irked by the lies and oppression of the Communist regime; and that energy drove her life.
The 760 pages of the book follow her career in great detail, with every meeting at every election and conference noted; so the reader has to keep alert for where her feelings emerge. One strong feeling is about the prejudice that she experienced as someone who was both from Communist East Germany and a woman. As she said, she was thought of as a little woman from the East who was not up to the job. But the tumultuous events that she lived through — the reunification of Germany, the crises over the economy and the euro, the expansion of Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Covid, and the refugee crisis — showed her to be an outstandingly determined, prudent, and collaborative leader.
Although President Putin blatantly lied to her, she was determined to keep in contact with him. There is one particularly telling detail. She had once been bitten by a dog and was frightened of them, and so Mr Putin brought his Labrador to his meeting with her. On the other hand, although she supported Georgia’s and Ukraine’s joining the European Union, she strongly opposed their joining NATO.
AlamyDr Angela Merkel at a discussion of her book in a church in Amsterdam last month
She writes that Brexit “felt like a humiliation, a disgrace for us”. She had worked hard to support David Cameron to obtain concessions, even though it left her isolated from other European leaders. She believes that the fundamental mistake had been made when the Conservative Party left the European People’s Party, demonstrating “the consequences that can arise when there’s a miscalculation from the start”.
On support for Israel, she writes that this is not just a matter of Israel’s security, but “a matter of state” for Germany: in other words, an essential part of its modern identity.
She believes that the biggest crisis of her time was in 2015, when Germany admitted 1.1 million refugees, asserting “We can do this,” and her government pledged to take half a million refugees a year for the next few years. What emerges here is her strong sense of the dignity of every human being, whether or not they have a legitimate claim to asylum.
She writes that, although she often cannot comprehend or sense God, she believes that she has been helped in her task of taking responsibility for others. She writes that her faith “helped me to feel that someone was watching over me even when I had to make difficult decisions”.
Merkel is now being criticised for her too open policy on refugees; for phasing out nuclear power in response to the Fukushima accident, thereby becoming too dependent on Russian gas; and for the failure of the German economy to switch to digital. The debate on these issues will continue, but, reading this book, nobody can doubt that she is a woman of high integrity and ability, who gave her all not just for the benefit of Germany, but for Europe and the wider world.
The Rt Revd Lord Harries of Pentregarth is a former Bishop of Oxford, and an Hon. Professor of Theology at King’s College, London. He is the author of Faith in Politics? Rediscovering the Christian roots of our political values (DLT, 2014).
Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021
Angela Merkel
Pan Macmillan £35
(978-1-0350-2075-1)
Church Times Bookshop £31.50