Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: Who was German chancellor before Merkel?
The chancellor's authority emanates from the provisions of the Basic Law and in practice from his or her status as leader of the party (or coalition of parties) holding a majority of seats in the Bundestag (federal parliament). With the exception of Helmut Schmidt, the chancellor has also been chairman of his or her own party. This was the case with Chancellor Gerhard Schröder from 1999 until he resigned the chairmanship of the SPD in 2004.
The SPD's leader and Chancellor candidate Martin Schulz and other party leaders stated that the SPD would not continue the current grand coalition government after unsatisfactory election results. Following the SPD's announcement that it would return to the opposition, the media speculated that Chancellor Angela Merkel might need to form a Jamaica coalition (black-yellow-green) with the Free Democrats and the Greens as that was the only viable coalition without the AfD or The Left, both of which had been ruled out by Merkel as coalition partners before the election. On 9 October 2017 Merkel officially announced that she would invite the Free Democrats and the Greens for talks about building a coalition government starting on 18 October 2017.
From 2005, Anne Onken imitated Angela Merkel on "The Gerd Show", who would later beat Schröder to become chancellor. During the run-up to the 2005 German federal elections, a duet was released between Brandt as Schröder and Onken as Merkel, entitled "Im Wahlkampf vor mir (Zonenmädchen)" (en: "Ahead of Me in the Polls (Girl from the East")) and set to the tune of "Im Wagen vor mir fährt ein junges Mädchen" by Hans Blum. Despite speculation that it would reach the top spot as "Der Steuersong" did before it, it only reached 25th place in the German charts.
Karl Ernst Thomas de Maizière (; born 21 January 1954) is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union who served as the Federal Minister of the Interior from 2013 to 2018 as part of the third cabinet of Chancellor Angela Merkel. A close confidant of Merkel, he also served as chief of staff of the German Chancellery and Federal Minister for Special Affairs in the First Merkel cabinet, from 2005 to 2009. He was Minister of the Interior from 2009 to 2011 and Minister of Defense from 2011 to 2013.
A popular anecdote was when the Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, met President Vladimir Putin, Putin brought Konni to their meetings. On 21 January 2007, the two leaders met at Bocharov Ruchei, the President's summer residence in Sochi, and at the beginning of their meeting Konni wandered into the room, leading Putin to ask Merkel, who reportedly has a "deep-seated fear of dogs", "The dog does not bother you, does she? She's a friendly dog and I'm sure she will behave herself." Merkel responded in Russian, a language in which she is fluent, "She doesn't eat journalists, after all." Konni then proceeded to sniff the German Chancellor, and sat at her feet. Merkel was reported to have shown "apparent discomfort". Putin later said that, after learning of Merkel's fear of dogs, he apologized to her.
In addition to being the first female German chancellor, the first to have grown up in the former East Germany (though she was born in the West), and the youngest German chancellor since the Second World War, Merkel is also the first born after World War II, and the first chancellor of the Federal Republic with a background in natural sciences. While she studied physics, her predecessors studied law, business or history, among other professions.
The second Merkel cabinet was the Government of Germany during the 17th legislative session of the Bundestag following the 2009 federal election, and left office on 17 December 2013. It was preceded in office by the first Merkel cabinet. Led by Chancellor Angela Merkel (the first female chancellor in German history), it was supported by a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP).
After the show was aired on German public television channel ZDFneo, the Turkish government released a verbal note demanding that the German government begin criminal prosecution of Böhmermann. German Chancellor Angela Merkel further escalated the situation by apologizing for Böhmermann's "intentionally hurtful" poem – later she called this "a mistake". On 15 April Merkel announced in a press conference that the German government had approved Böhmermann's criminal prosecution, but would abolish the respective paragraph 103 of the German penal code before 2018. Intense criticism followed the Chancellor's decision, with speculation that she decided to allow the prosecution in order to protect Germany's refugee deal with Turkey. The case was dropped in October 2016.
Merkel has emphasized international cooperation, both in the context of the European Union and NATO. Merkel played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. Merkel played a crucial role in managing the financial crisis at the European and international level.
Merkel has been widely described as the "de facto" leader of the European Union throughout her tenure as Chancellor. Merkel has twice been named the world's second most powerful person by "Forbes" magazine, the highest ranking ever achieved by a woman. In December 2015, Merkel was named as "Time" magazine's Person of the Year, with the magazine's cover declaring her to be the "Chancellor of the Free World." On 26 March 2014, Merkel became the longest-serving incumbent head of government in the European Union and she is currently the senior G7 leader. In May 2016, Merkel was named the most powerful woman in the world for a record tenth time by "Forbes". In 2016 Merkel was described by "The New York Times" as "the Liberal West's Last Defender" and by Timothy Garton Ash as "the leader of the free world." Following the announcement that Merkel will run for a fourth term as Chancellor, the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Norbert Röttgen has said that Merkel desires to hold "the liberal order, in the trans-Atlantic area, together" and that "the Chancellor is a cornerstone of [the] political concept of the West as acting as a global player."
Like the Social Democrats, the Greens backed Chancellor Angela Merkel on most bailout votes in the German parliament during her second term, saying their pro-European stances overrode party politics. Shortly before the elections, the party plummeted to a four-year low in the polls, undermining efforts by Peer Steinbrück's Social Democrats to unseat Merkel.
The 8th and current Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany is Angela Merkel, who was elected in 2005 and re-elected in 2009, 2013 and 2017. She is the first female chancellor since the establishment of the original office in 1867 and is known in German as ', the feminine form of '. Merkel is also the first chancellor elected since the fall of the Berlin Wall to have been raised in the former East Germany.
Germany's Foreign Ministry summoned the Turkish ambassador to protest after Bağış accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of "picking on" Turkey for domestic political gain before German elections, after Merkel criticized the crackdown as "much too strong". The accusation came after Germany blocked a decision to move forward the membership negotiations after the crackdown. Bağış said that if Merkel is looking for "internal political material" ahead of Germany’s September elections, "this should not be Turkey". He also pointed to the election defeat last year of then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy, a fellow opponent of Turkish EU membership.
In October 2015, Horst Seehofer, Bavarian State Premier and leader of CSU, the sister party of Merkel's CDU, criticised Merkel's policy of allowing in hundreds of thousands of migrants from the Middle East: "We're now in a state of mind without rules, without system and without order because of a German decision." Seehofer attacked Merkel policies in sharp language, threatened to sue the government in the high court, and hinted that the CSU might topple Merkel. Many MPs of Merkel's CDU party also voices dissatisfaction with Merkel. Chancellor Merkel insisted that Germany has the economic strength to cope with the influx of migrants and reiterated that there is no legal maximum limit on the number of migrants Germany can take.
The family of Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, is of German and Polish descent. Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on 17 July 1954 in Hamburg. The Kasner name is derived from Jan Kaźmierczak, a Pole from Poznań who lived in the 18th century. Merkel's grandfather changed the name to Kasner in 1930. Merkel has been married twice, and kept the name of her first husband Ulrich Merkel. Angela Merkel's family was extensively discussed in a 2013 biography.
After the EU summit, German chancellor Angela Merkel faced resistance by the Bavarian CSU party over the result of the summit, and interior minister HorstSeehofer announced a "declaration"Sunday 1 July. Seehofer threatened to order "national measures" and reject migrants who are registered in other EU countries. It was reported that he considered talks with Merkel in Berlin on 30 June 2018 on the summit results as "ineffective" and "useless", stating that Merkel's plan would create new "pull factors" for asylum seekers to come to Europe. He also rejected a proposal by Merkel to accommodate asylum seekers who are already registered in EU countries in so-called "anchor centers" ("Ankerzentren"), which would allow quicker deportations.
After Guttenberg's visit to the US, negotiations between the German government, GM, and potential Opel investors, including Fiat and Canada's Magna International, were stalled by GM and the U.S. Treasury. In contrast to Merkel and other German political leaders, Guttenberg preferred insolvency for Opel rather than the infusion of unconditional financial assistance from the German state. Because of the resultant financial risks to the German state, Guttenberg opposed the sale of Opel to Magna International, favoured by Chancellor Merkel, and—according to media coverage—even offered his resignation over the controversy. The Opel-Magna deal later failed, and Opel remained a subsidiary of GM, who had to reimburse financial assistance to Germany. In the summer of 2009, he surpassed Angela Merkel as the most popular politician in Germany.
On 24 January 2017, Schulz became the Social Democrats' candidate for chancellor in that year's Federal election. In March he was unanimously chosen as official head of the party, the first time in post-war Germany a leader of the SPD received no dissenting vote. Following the announcement of his nomination, his party gained an average of ten percentage points in public opinion polls. For a short period of time the SPD was close to the Union parties of Chancellor Merkel, during this time political observers regarded it possible that Schulz could unseat Merkel in the federal election on 24 September 2017. Polls also showed Schulz leading Merkel if Germans could elect their chancellor directly.
The German chancellor is officially addressed as "Herr Bundeskanzler" if the chancellor is a man. The current holder of this office, Angela Merkel, considered to be the planet's most influential woman by Forbes Magazine, is officially addressed as "Frau Bundeskanzlerin", the feminine form of the title. Use of the mixed form "Frau Bundeskanzler" was deprecated by the government in 2004 because it is regarded as impolite and was seen as a way of acknowledging Merkel's future leadership.[4]
For the TV show "Unsere Besten", more than 1 million Germans were asked to rank the 100 most notable Germans in an unrepresentative opinion poll. The list also included German Chancellors:
Neither Kurt Georg Kiesinger nor Angela Merkel (who was leader of the opposition at that time) were ranked among the 100 most notable Germans.
Soon after the May 2012 elections, Kraft placed third in a "Der Spiegel" poll among German politicians right after Chancellor Angela Merkel and the new federal president, Joachim Gauck, and ahead of any other politician in the SPD including Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who lost to Merkel in 2009, and party chairman Sigmar Gabriel. This vaulted Kraft into the top rank of German politicians, prompting speculation that she might be the strongest contender to lead the party against Merkel and potentially succeed her as chancellor. However, she soon announced that she did not want to become the SPD's candidate for chancellor, preferring instead to stay in her home state for the five-year term she had just won.
"Angela Merkel - The Unexpected" tells the story of Chancellor Merkel’s unexpected rise to power – from an East German physicist to the most powerful woman in the world. The film takes a look at her biography from when she entered the political stage in 1989 to the present. A second focus is put on the refugee crisis and establishes the connection between Merkel’s actions and her biography. Political and personal companions who have witnessed the chancellor throughout the years comment on her childhood in East Germany, her first political steps, her rise to the top, her eventful chancellorship, and the current political situation she is facing. In an exclusive interview, Angela Merkel herself reflects on her life in the German Democratic Republic, comparing it to her life after the fall of the Berlin Wall, her unexpected and unprecedented career, the refugee crisis, and finally on herself as a politician, a motivator, or a listener.
Merkel was born in Hamburg in then-West Germany and moved to East Germany as an infant when her father, a Lutheran clergyman, received a pastorate in Perleberg. She obtained a doctorate in quantum chemistry in 1986 and worked as a research scientist until 1989. Merkel entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989, and briefly served as a deputy spokesperson for the first democratically elected East German Government headed by Lothar de Maizière in 1990. Following German reunification in 1990, Merkel was elected to the Bundestag for the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and has been reelected ever since. As the protégée of Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Merkel was appointed as the Federal Minister for Women and Youth in Kohl's government in 1991, and became the Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety in 1994. After her party lost the federal election in 1998, Merkel was elected Secretary-General of the CDU before becoming the party's first female leader two years later in the aftermath of a donations scandal that toppled Wolfgang Schäuble.
"Tracey Ullman's Show" premiered 11 January 2016. Ullman became internationally famous for parodying German chancellor Angela Merkel in this show. According to German media, her impersonation is the best spoof of Merkel in the world.
In addition to the billboard, the "Merkel-Raute" was also employed in the CDU's other campaigning efforts. The Young Union ("Junge Union" or JU in German), the youth wing of the CDU, organised flashmobs in which members gathered in a circle while imitating the gesture in several public places in Germany. It also produced posters featuring a stylised version of the "Merkel-Raute" above the words "'" ("Keep calm and vote for the Chancellor" or "Be cool and choose the Chancellor") a play on the British wartime slogan Keep Calm and Carry On; these posters were also made into various articles of clothing, such as T-shirts and hoodies. This stylised version had also been used by teAM Deutschland, the CDU's campaign team, to represent Merkel on its website as early as March 2013. Also, the Association of Christian Democratic Students ("Ring Christlich-Demokratischer Studenten" or RCDS in German), a student organisation associated with the CDU, created the website "'" ("Students for Merkel") featuring photographs of university students imitating the "Merkel-Raute" with the slogan """" ("I'm voting for Angie! And you?"), to which readers were encouraged to upload their own photographs.
A small number of members of minor political parties filed similar complaints: the Court similarly rejected them during the week before the election.The CDU/CSU nominated Angela Merkel for Chancellor, the first time in German history that one of the two larger parties has nominated a woman for this position. The CDU presented a platform involving increasing the pace and scope of economic deregulation in Germany and pursuing cuts in income tax and public spending (many commentators have compared Merkel with Margaret Thatcher). The CDU began the campaign with a 21% lead over the SPD and confidence in Merkel's victory led the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, to meet with her ahead of Chancellor Schröder during a visit to Berlin in June.