Biography forAngela Merkel 

Date of Birth

17 July 1954, Hamburg, Germany 

Birth Name

Angela Kasner 

Height

5' 8" (1.73 m) 

Spouse

Joachim Sauer	(December 1998 - present)
Ulrich Merkel	(1977 - 1982) (divorced)

Trivia

Is the head of the political party CDU in Germany.

Candidate to become Chancellor of Germany in the 2005 Federal election. She was minister for women and youth (1990-1994) and for the environment and reactor safety (1994-1998) in the cabinet of Helmut Kohl.

Worked and studied at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in the former GDR (1978-1990).

From 22nd November 2005 the first female German Chancellor (Bundeskanzlerin).

Spokesperson in Lothar de Maizière's government; the only democratically elected prime minister of East Germany. She made his cousin Thomas de Maizière a member of her government in November 2005.

Ranked in the "Time 100: The People Who Shape Our World" list by "Time" magazine (8 May 2006).

Topped "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" list by "Forbes" magazine in 2006 (1 September 2006).

In addition to being the first female German Chancellor, she is also the first one to have grown up in East Germany, the first one born after World War II, and the first one with a background in natural sciences. She studied physics, her predecessors law and business.

Is fluent in German, Russian and English.

Studied physics at the University of Leipzig from 1973 to 1978.

Launched a video podcast on her website, making her the first head of state to address her nation via video podcast (8 June 2006).

Appeared on the annual "Time 100" list, "Time" magazine's annual ranking of the 100 most influential people in the world, in 2007 for the second time (4 May 2007).

Born to Horst Kasner, a Lutheran pastor, and his wife Herlind Jentzsch, a teacher, she has an older brother, Marcus, and a younger sister, Irene.

Topped "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" list by "Forbes" magazine for the second year in a row (30 August 2007).

Has a look-alike puppet in the French show "Les guignols de l'info" (1988).