Angela Merkel: Europe’s Most Influential Leader

Matthew Qvortrup

Duckworth Overlook, £25

Review by Brian Morton

I WONDER if Angela Merkel ever saw Tracey Ullman’s TV impression of her. I hope so. It was admiring as well as sharp. The schtick was Angela’s unsuspected sexual vanity, carefully stoked by an ever-loyal assistant. Obama is hitting on her. Sarkozy and Hollande, well, they’re Frenchmen. And Angela is a martyr to these verdammt ****-me shoes she has to wear to keep the boys happy. It was delightful, because utterly counter-intuitive. In the sad, school-prom atmosphere of big politics, where spin and appearance and instant soundbite are the chief values, Merkel appears dumpy, frumpy and sometimes astonishingly slow to make up her mind.

And yet no one is likely to question Matthew Qvortrup’s subtitle, even if it makes no specific reference to a time-frame. Since the War? Since the Wall? Merkel’s rise has been astonishing. A glance in the index on the off-chance of an Ullman citation reveals only the more obvious Walter Ulbricht – one of the founding fathers of East Germany.

But then comes the realisation that Merkel is only the eighth German chancellor since 1945 and the most secure, even though she depends on delicate coalition and constantly has to navigate the vanity of tiny political differences. Which made it all the more extraordinary that this most circumspect of politicians should have chosen to spend almost all her carefully accumulated political capital by welcoming a million refugees into Germany, a decision that set her at odds with many of her colleagues and much of the electorate. Yet a look into her past – which as she admitted to Stern in 2004 was a closed book even to some who knew her well – reveals how she came to such a decision.

The many references to Ulbricht serve as reminder that Angela Merkel grew up in the East. When she had to face a hostile public she rationalised her most controversial decision by saying that she could not erect a wall to keep out the dispossessed because she had lived behind a wall herself. Merkel isn’t just an Östi but an Östi of direct Polish and Catholic descent on both sides. Her father Horst Kasner converted and became a Lutheran pastor whose thankless mission was to bring the Gospel to a godless state ostensibly run on principles of scientific socialism and the dialectic. It seems that Horst collaborated somewhat with the East German authorities in order to thrive and it’s clear that Angela – who we’ve been mispronouncing: it’s Angeela, with the stress on the second syllable – enjoyed a more privileged and consumer-fulfilled upbringing than many young Easterners, thanks to care packages from family in Hamburg. But it’s also clear that the principles of Christian socialism remain strongly with her, albeit in conservative free-market form.

Qvortrup wisely uses a good deal of space to fill in the wider context of post-war German politics, but the real fascination of his book is the personality of Merkel herself. The awkward gait has nothing to do with high-heeled shoes but is the remnant of an unexplained childhood condition which left her unable to walk properly till the age of five. The most telling incident happened during a swimming lesson at school when Merkel’s class were asked to attempt a dive from a high board. Angela walked the length of the board, looked down, walked away, looked down again, walked away, and then eventually jumped; but only when she had worked out the pros and cons, the likely risks and obscure benefits. Everyone else simply baulked. There’s a fundamental truth about her buried in there.

At school she refused to join the state-endorsed Pioneers, and so was never fully recognised for her academic achievements, which included fluent Russian and an intuitive grasp of higher mathematics. Merkel’s background in quantum physics finally gives the lie to Mrs Thatcher’s pathetic insistence that not only was she the first woman in No 10, she was also the first scientist. Mrs T’s research helped put extra froth (ie less substance) in ice-cream. Angela Merkel’s led her down into the fundamental working of things. If she carries a sardonic reputation as the mathematician of European politics, so much the better that she can actually count.

Qvortrup’s portrait is affectionate and detailed. It reveals a leader of real inter-personal skill and no small personal courage. Vladimir Putin (literally) set his dog on her, knowing that she had been bitten and was phobic. Merkel got through the encounter and still managed to negotiate a peace deal. Silvio Berlusconi said he wouldn’t give her one; a week or so later he was out of power and in disgrace and Mrs Merkel was doing Berlusconi impressions (she’s a terrific mimic, it seems) for her mostly female inner circle. That’s something the Ullman impression gets spot on. In contrast to Mrs Thatcher’s pussy-whipped “vegetables”, Merkel has a team who think like her and who regard the passing show of presentational politics as a bit of a giggle and a pointless distraction from the real thing. They don’t call her “Mutti” for nothing.