Angela Merkel

Angela Dorothea Merkel[a] (née Kasner; born 17 July 1954) is a German politician who is currently Chancellor of Germany. She is also the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

A former research scientist with a doctorate in physical chemistry, 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. Merkel was appointed as the Minister for Women and Youth in the federal government under Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1991, and became the Minister for the Environment 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 woman leader two years later in the aftermath of a donations scandal that toppled Wolfgang Schäuble.