0:00:18 > 0:00:22She is the most powerful women in the world, the Chancellor of
0:00:22 > 0:00:25Germany, since 2005 and a transformational leader who has had
0:00:25 > 0:00:29a profound impact on the reunification of her country as well
0:00:29 > 0:00:35as being a dominant player in the EU, but she is a rather enigmatic
0:00:35 > 0:00:40figure in the UK, but help is at hand in the form of my guess today,
0:00:40 > 0:00:43the politics and gender studies professor who book becoming Madame
0:00:43 > 0:00:47Chancellor examines her life and politics. One of the most
0:00:47 > 0:00:53interesting factors about her is her background, she grew up not in West
0:00:53 > 0:00:57Germany, but in east Germany, the Communist East Germany, with the
0:00:57 > 0:01:01very oppressive state surveillance mechanism and she was the daughter
0:01:01 > 0:01:04of a Lutheran pastor, which would normally mean she was very much
0:01:04 > 0:01:11under the thumb of the security services?She certainly learnt at a
0:01:11 > 0:01:16young age not to talk too much. That those conversations they could have
0:01:16 > 0:01:22at home, her father was in charge of what was then perceived as a radical
0:01:22 > 0:01:26theological group were people could participate. That suggests her
0:01:26 > 0:01:31father had some kind of closer ties with the Government, I'm not going
0:01:31 > 0:01:36to say he was a secret informer, but we can assume from his position. She
0:01:36 > 0:01:41has this kind of early childhood experience of being somehow
0:01:41 > 0:01:45protected and also being somewhat privileged because she has western
0:01:45 > 0:01:50relatives who can send them food and clothing packages when things are a
0:01:50 > 0:01:56bit short and she doesn't really face the kind of persecution that
0:01:56 > 0:01:59pastors's children otherwise have experienced. It must have been her
0:01:59 > 0:02:05father 's willingness to cooperate the Church in socialism, they called
0:02:05 > 0:02:10it, that greeted her. But she was just a very hard worker. She had
0:02:10 > 0:02:15very good grades, her parents encouraged her. At a certain point,
0:02:15 > 0:02:18you need that expertise, particularly if you have decided to
0:02:18 > 0:02:23go into physics.There was a moment I really blinked at when you were
0:02:23 > 0:02:27going through her early life when she opts for a Lutheran confirmation
0:02:27 > 0:02:31rather than a state youth dedication ceremony. I thought that brought
0:02:31 > 0:02:37home how different society in East Germany was then.A lot of people
0:02:37 > 0:02:40opted for the state service just because you could experience
0:02:40 > 0:02:45discrimination. I think this is because she is the pastor's.. We
0:02:45 > 0:02:50don't get a lot of Merkel the religious person or Merkel the
0:02:50 > 0:02:54poorest person when we look at her political behaviour. I see a lot of
0:02:54 > 0:02:59that in her approach to human rights and freedom of movement. I think
0:02:59 > 0:03:02that was just a very personal religious experience for her and her
0:03:02 > 0:03:09family. And she does keep up some kind of connection to a church youth
0:03:09 > 0:03:13group when she goes to the university, but she is also actively
0:03:13 > 0:03:19involved with the free German youth because that will ensure that you're
0:03:19 > 0:03:22not going to face discrimination in the career choices are opportunities
0:03:22 > 0:03:27later on.So you have to sign up to bits of the state to ensure it
0:03:27 > 0:03:34doesn't take a dislike to you?The east Germans use the word, we have
0:03:34 > 0:03:37arrangement, they went through certain rituals, engaged in certain
0:03:37 > 0:03:40kinds of behaviours knowing it's what you had to do to get by. This
0:03:40 > 0:03:46was used against them after unification when the west said, you
0:03:46 > 0:03:50were collaborating, you were complicit with communists and all
0:03:50 > 0:03:53the East Germans could do was say, you did live there, you don't know
0:03:53 > 0:03:58what we had to do in order to make it through.Angela Merkel gets out
0:03:58 > 0:04:03from under this quite quickly, it is quite how rapidly she rose in the
0:04:03 > 0:04:08Christian Democrat party, the CDU, and around the time of reunification
0:04:08 > 0:04:12she was in there and rising very rapidly through the ranks in an
0:04:12 > 0:04:17organisation would you are expected to make your grades and plod through
0:04:17 > 0:04:22different levels of the hierarchy. Her first step into politics was
0:04:22 > 0:04:28working as deputy press secretary, but even before that first three and
0:04:28 > 0:04:33last election in East Germany, she got involved because she knew how to
0:04:33 > 0:04:36complete computers together. All these West Germans were sending lots
0:04:36 > 0:04:39of money, fax machines and computers, and she came into an
0:04:39 > 0:04:43office and said, is there anything you would like me to do? And they
0:04:43 > 0:04:47said, whatever is in that box. She proved useful and started listening
0:04:47 > 0:04:51to make up her mind what group she wanted to affiliate with. The spring
0:04:51 > 0:04:57into the Cabinet had to do with him feeling like he had to have a couple
0:04:57 > 0:05:01of talking Easterners in there, particularly because the unification
0:05:01 > 0:05:05negotiations had to be completely dominated by the west and all the
0:05:05 > 0:05:12terms were pretty much dictated by the west.One of the other things
0:05:12 > 0:05:16about this is as worthy gender politics of Angela Merkel Boss rise.
0:05:16 > 0:05:22The parties wanted women to be visible in the top table, but not
0:05:22 > 0:05:27saying very much.Seamer but not heard. Three women were brought into
0:05:27 > 0:05:31the first Cabinet after unification by dividing up one ministry into
0:05:31 > 0:05:35three separate parts, it is kind of interesting that Angela Merkel, who
0:05:35 > 0:05:41was the women's minister and Minister of youth, was not bit in
0:05:41 > 0:05:45charge of the great abortion debate and the negotiations of that. They
0:05:45 > 0:05:50didn't trust her with that because abortion had been free and legal in
0:05:50 > 0:05:54East Germany and they passed at an to another women, a Catholic
0:05:54 > 0:06:00Bavarian. It wasn't free legal in West Germany? It was not legal, and
0:06:00 > 0:06:05even after unification the Supreme Court ruling that comes out declared
0:06:05 > 0:06:11abortion illegal at an punishable, which is a phrase only a German
0:06:11 > 0:06:17could understand.Quite a circle to square. What is the expectation of
0:06:17 > 0:06:24women in politics in that era?We are already talking about 1989, 19
0:06:24 > 0:06:3090. The SDP and the Greens by that point had adopted some quarter
0:06:30 > 0:06:35system for themselves, the SDP it was women had to have 40% of the
0:06:35 > 0:06:39party offices and then they were attempting to provide at least 40%
0:06:39 > 0:06:43of the candidates on the list on that proportional representation
0:06:43 > 0:06:50thing. Whereas the Greens did 50-50. One women, one man, one moment, one
0:06:50 > 0:06:56man. The CDU at the time she entered had an informal quota which was more
0:06:56 > 0:07:01about wanting one person from each state, we want one person from the
0:07:01 > 0:07:05most conservative wing of the CDU and one person from the more liberal
0:07:05 > 0:07:11Catholic wing of the CDU. She came in as a summation of a number of
0:07:11 > 0:07:15quota interests they had. They really did not expect her to stay
0:07:15 > 0:07:22and they certainly did not expect to be with the rest of the team at
0:07:22 > 0:07:26their own political game.Was there a sense the men at the top table
0:07:26 > 0:07:31looked at her and saw her as a product of the quota system and she
0:07:31 > 0:07:35wouldn't go anywhere?I don't think they even looked at the quota
0:07:35 > 0:07:43system. They thought he had appointed her four, he had his own
0:07:43 > 0:07:46reasons, bringing in a feud talking Easterners, and as soon as she
0:07:46 > 0:07:51started to get a grasp on that first ministry she was not a feminist, she
0:07:51 > 0:07:55had no background in politics, and then she started pushing for things
0:07:55 > 0:07:59like rules against sexual harassment for dividing up the new positions in
0:07:59 > 0:08:04the civil service evenly between men and women, particularly for the
0:08:04 > 0:08:10unemployed East German women, and they thought, well, we have to
0:08:10 > 0:08:13promote her upstairs so they moved her to the environmental Minister
0:08:13 > 0:08:18and brought in someone even younger than Merkel who was a bonus five
0:08:18 > 0:08:22catholic, which was a very rare thing in East Germany, who would
0:08:22 > 0:08:27then continue along their preferred lines of women's policies. She moved
0:08:27 > 0:08:30to the nuclear and environmental agency, and even there they took
0:08:30 > 0:08:37away some of the major nuclear reactor safety issues and pick those
0:08:37 > 0:08:40over in the energy ministry run by a West German Mandy contrast, even
0:08:40 > 0:08:46though she was the physicist. Despite all the arrivals around her
0:08:46 > 0:08:51and all the whole balls that are put on her, she very, very rapidly. How
0:08:51 > 0:08:54did she become Chancellor when all these Bibles are trying to impede
0:08:54 > 0:09:03her and overtake her? -- these rivals.She learned by watching and
0:09:03 > 0:09:05not speaking, particularly the behaviour of all the men surrounding
0:09:05 > 0:09:12her. When it came to the crunch, she had already moved up into the
0:09:12 > 0:09:16position of CDU general secretary because coal without due to be
0:09:16 > 0:09:20finance scandal, someone else was I due to be finance scandal, and a lot
0:09:20 > 0:09:24of other rivals were running into scandals at the state level, where
0:09:24 > 0:09:29they had their own power bases. At that point, she went off to Bavaria
0:09:29 > 0:09:36to negotiate to say, even though I am the general secretary of the
0:09:36 > 0:09:41party and I should by rights be the Chancellor candidate, why don't you
0:09:41 > 0:09:46run this time and then I'll just be, the chair in the parliament and then
0:09:46 > 0:09:50I'll be able to run the next time. So she made it look like it was her
0:09:50 > 0:09:54deal. She really pulled the tablecloth off from underneath all
0:09:54 > 0:09:59of the dishes, the China that was still sitting there. She has become
0:09:59 > 0:10:03a tactician, but she did that by observing people, studying very
0:10:03 > 0:10:08hard, even during the financial crisis, she is said to have pulled
0:10:08 > 0:10:12two or three or later is to figure out what was going on.What's
0:10:12 > 0:10:16fascinating about her rise issue comes from the outside of the
0:10:16 > 0:10:20system, rises up it remarkably fast. 2005, though she is running for
0:10:20 > 0:10:26Chancellor, becoming the Chancellor of one of these grand coalitions,
0:10:26 > 0:10:29like a labour Conservative Government in this country, a quite
0:10:29 > 0:10:35extraordinary combination, but she had the political skills to do it.
0:10:35 > 0:10:38She had the skills but there was also a power vacuum because all of
0:10:38 > 0:10:42the other potential rivals are candidates had kind of eliminated
0:10:42 > 0:10:48themselves from the picture in the short run and they really thought,
0:10:48 > 0:10:51this is my gut feeling, that they were putting her in as a kind of
0:10:51 > 0:10:57placeholder, as they did with others. I don't think they had quite
0:10:57 > 0:11:01the same attitude towards Margaret Thatcher, but they really thought
0:11:01 > 0:11:04they would just put her in until they can figure out which real man
0:11:04 > 0:11:10would take over and then she just proved so popular and so successful
0:11:10 > 0:11:14and was able to negotiate effectively with the SDP because I
0:11:14 > 0:11:20think she really likes being in the middle.She's not an ideologue. In
0:11:20 > 0:11:25her time in power, she doesn't quite remarkable things. Part of this you
0:11:25 > 0:11:29suggest goes back to her background and sciences and understanding of
0:11:29 > 0:11:34statistics and numbers. She took a look at Germany's demographic time
0:11:34 > 0:11:37bomb and said we have to have more immigration we can't pay the
0:11:37 > 0:11:41pensions. She took a look at the effects of the nuclear disaster in
0:11:41 > 0:11:45Japan and basically shut down Germany's nuclear-power industry.
0:11:45 > 0:11:50These were very, very huge decisions she was prepared to go for in the
0:11:50 > 0:11:54way a lot of politicians have.There might be one politician who could
0:11:54 > 0:12:00compete with her at least on one issue, who also entered politics
0:12:00 > 0:12:07from the side. That means that since they haven't had that socialisation
0:12:07 > 0:12:12in the party, it is learning by doing, it is using your own personal
0:12:12 > 0:12:17experiences to try and make rules for yourself and as an outsider you
0:12:17 > 0:12:21observe and you realise where there are opportunities that other people
0:12:21 > 0:12:25aren't going to see because they are intent on climbing the normal party
0:12:25 > 0:12:28ladder. I just think she happened to be the right person at the right
0:12:28 > 0:12:35time he was very smart and able to study people in a kind of systematic
0:12:35 > 0:12:38way, and then suddenly she was able to start putting a lot of the skills
0:12:38 > 0:12:45to work.For us in Britain, Angela Merkel has been a fixture on the
0:12:45 > 0:12:47news bulletins occasionally, she's been running Germany for a very long
0:12:47 > 0:12:51time, she's gone through three governments, she is trying to pull
0:12:51 > 0:12:56together a fourth now. The question we asked, she is the big player in
0:12:56 > 0:13:00the EU, but what is her attitude towards Britain leaving? It is
0:13:00 > 0:13:03slightly after the period of your book, but how do you think she views
0:13:03 > 0:13:09that event and what did she see as the opportunities?I think she is
0:13:09 > 0:13:13deeply saddened by this, especially for someone who didn't grow up
0:13:13 > 0:13:19internalising the EU, she had to face east, it was the Soviet Union.
0:13:19 > 0:13:26It took her 3-5 years to figure out, the EU is not to some sort of trade
0:13:26 > 0:13:30set, it is also a community of values that you can upload policies
0:13:30 > 0:13:38as well as download policies. She really came to rely on this triad,
0:13:38 > 0:13:42France, her relationship with France is not as close as previous German
0:13:42 > 0:13:47chancellors, but she really saw the need for a Britain, France and
0:13:47 > 0:13:51Germany to balance each other out. France more in terms of social
0:13:51 > 0:13:55policies, Britain in terms of market deregulation and things along these
0:13:55 > 0:14:01lines. I think she is very crushed by this and realises that that
0:14:01 > 0:14:06increases the burden on her to keep the EU together, plus we are also
0:14:06 > 0:14:10watching the spread of this kind of petulance, at the Euro phobia and
0:14:10 > 0:14:14Euroscepticism to the new central east European members. She's going
0:14:14 > 0:14:19to have to play it at both ends. Does she want a constructive
0:14:19 > 0:14:22relationship does she think maintaining the EU project is
0:14:22 > 0:14:27punishing Britain?I don't think she would say punishing, I think she
0:14:27 > 0:14:30would say there are consequences for your actions and you cannot pick the
0:14:30 > 0:14:37reasons out of the cinnamon bun, to use a German metaphor, when you are
0:14:37 > 0:14:43a member, you have rights but you also have responsibilities. The east
0:14:43 > 0:14:47central east European countries are also in a dubious position because
0:14:47 > 0:14:50they were more than happy to accept the subsidies to become members and
0:14:50 > 0:14:54night when it's time for them to give back by distributing the
0:14:54 > 0:14:59refugees and things along those lines, she is dealing with both of
0:14:59 > 0:15:06these parties neck who want the rights but not the responsibilities.
0:15:06 > 0:15:10Is she a fading figure after three governments trying to pull together
0:15:10 > 0:15:14a fourth she out on the European stage in particular?I don't think
0:15:14 > 0:15:17she's the vegan, I think that the basic problem within her own party
0:15:17 > 0:15:20as party as well as within these other parties is that they don't
0:15:20 > 0:15:25have a six as a generation, they don't have a second row of them who
0:15:25 > 0:15:29can rise to the top. And, this has become very clear, just in this
0:15:29 > 0:15:34debate over the last three or four weeks. However, that would give her
0:15:34 > 0:15:38a new role in sort of steering her party and some of its personnel
0:15:38 > 0:15:42policies in the direction that provides some longer-term stability,
0:15:42 > 0:15:48the EU cannot do without Angela Merkel, she's the person who has the
0:15:48 > 0:15:52most institutional memory, she has proven very successful in mastering
0:15:52 > 0:15:57the details of the euro crisis, of the energy turnaround, that is also
0:15:57 > 0:16:01taken on a new dynamic within the EU. She is certainly leading the
0:16:01 > 0:16:07charge in terms of value community and the refugee question so I don't
0:16:07 > 0:16:12see her as being weakened, I see a lot of journalists trying to figure
0:16:12 > 0:16:16out something new to say about her because I think they're getting
0:16:16 > 0:16:22tired of always talking about the right-wing populist AFB, AFB, AFB so
0:16:22 > 0:16:28I think that she has a lot of -- to give. She made a conscious decision
0:16:28 > 0:16:32to pursue a fourth term and she had said very early in her career, she
0:16:32 > 0:16:36wasn't going to just hang around politics until they pushed her out
0:16:36 > 0:16:43the door. She suggested we back in 1992, that woman have many different
0:16:43 > 0:16:47sources of identity and when they leave politics, they have a lot of
0:16:47 > 0:16:50other things to do whereas a lot of men feel like that any life is over
0:16:50 > 0:16:54and that's why they hang on a lot longer than they could possibly be
0:16:54 > 0:16:57contributing to the political debate.There are a couple more
0:16:57 > 0:17:00chapters for the next edition already growing in your mind, thank
0:17:00 > 0:17:05you very much for joining us. We'll talk will be back again to -- soon,
0:17:05 > 0:17:07join us then.