Today, Explained - The most powerful woman in the world

Episode Date: December 20, 2018

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is officially planning her exit from politics. The Guardian’s Kate Connolly explains how an awkward scientist became the most powerful woman in the world and defined a global immigration crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

think about all those g8 g20 summits from the past 10 years the bush ones the obama ones the trump ones all those nato summits too all these men sitting in the same rooms in the same dark suits but there's always one woman in the room. She's wearing bright colors. She's quietly biding her time, listening, watching. Presidents and prime ministers come and go, but the chancellor's still there. Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world.

But now, after 13 years as Germany's chancellor and 18 years as the head of its biggest party, the CDU, Angela Merkel is finally planning her exit. An earthquake, a bombshell, a day of destiny. There's been no shortage of drastic descriptions for Angela Merkel's announcement. It has always been my wish to carry out my state and party duties with dignity and one day to leave them with dignity. But I know that in politics this cannot always happen in a planned way. She recapped her time in office, talked about when she came into that position, how she hadn't really expected to get it. It had been a bit of a surprise.

And of course, at the same time, pictures were running through our heads that have been on German television in the last few days of when she actually did get that post and rather sort of mousely took to the podium to accept the post and to say that she would become the CDU leader and she then gave a sweeping recap over the years that she had held in office. In this moment I am filled with a single, all-embracing feeling, of gratitude. Thank you very much.

And then it was quite touching in a way that she mentioned the fact that just days before this speech she had been at the funeral of George Bush Senior and talking about him as being a man who had had the courage to back German unification and how important that had been for her own biography. Kate Connolly is The Guardian's correspondent in Berlin. I talked to her about Angela Merkel and who might replace her. So Angela Merkel's wish candidate, as they say in Germany, Wunschkandidat,

was Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Angela Merkel could barely hide her delight. Her preferred candidate, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, is now the new CDU chief. Try saying that in a hurry. I'm going to try right now. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer.

How do I do? No. I blew it. Yeah, you blew it. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. How do I do? A note. I blew it. Yeah, you blew it. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. Try again. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. That's right. Now, if you want a coward's way out, you can call her AKK. That is the synonym that a lot of Germans here will use for her because Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is such a mouthful. So that was the person Angela Merkel was keen to have in the role. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer as such a mouthful. So that was the person Angela Merkel was keen to have in the

role. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was talked about as being Angela Merkel's crown princess, but she didn't publicly endorse her. So once again, it was an example of how Angela Merkel has managed to control things in the way that she's sort of quite famous for, had managed to get her own way by quite skillfully maneuvering this woman into place a few months ago and then quietly giving her her support. Angela Kramp-Karrenbauer now faces high expectations. She'll be measured not only on her ability to reinvigorate the party and win elections, but also on whether she can succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor. The other candidates for the position were men.

How important was it to Merkel to have her successor be a woman? I don't know. Merkel's never made a big thing about women in politics. She said, you know, you just get to where you are based on your own merits. But when she enters a room to address businessmen, she'll make a dig about the fact that they're all dressed in dark suits and there's no women amongst them. So I think probably secretly, she actually quite liked the fact that it was a woman. I think what is interesting from a sort of wider societal perspective is Germany is perceived as being a sort of reasonably kind of liberal society. But, you know, it is the case that women are still fighting for those positions that they feel are

rightly theirs as CEOs in companies fight for things like child care so that they can go back to work after having children those sorts of issues are still really big topics here and I think what is of interest is to see that a party that is very conservative in its values, the Christian Democratic Union, that they once again, for the second time, have chosen a woman to lead the party. What was it about Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer that attracted Angela Merkel? She had been reasonably supportive of Angela Merkel's very controversial immigration policy. And she also had basically supported Merkel over the years. At the same time, Kamp-Karrenbauer has been very keen to show that she's her own person and that she's very

different from Angela Merkel. What does this relationship of having this planned successor in three years, announcing that your time in office is coming to an end, but still being there mean for the next three years of German politics? I mean, three years is almost the entire length of a presidential term in the United States. So what does everyone knowing that she's done and everyone knowing who she wants to replace her mean for what's to come? On the one hand, it kind of ties her hands. It makes Camp Karl Mauer's job not that easy. On the other hand, it kind of ties her hands. It makes Camp Kalmauer's job not that easy.

On the other hand, if the two of them can cooperate on all the important issues of the day, it could free her up a bit to make certain decisions, which may be harder when you've got to face another election in three years' time. So what are those decisions that are still left to figure out? The biggest one, of course, is immigration. That's a topic that dominates all conversations here, all policy debates. There's also the question of Europe, the future of Europe at a time when the EU, the European Union is in a very, very shaky position, not least because of the lack of solidarity over the immigration topic. And then not least, of course, challenges further afield on the international stage, relations between Germany and the US, for example, which, of course, have become quite sticky since a certain president

came to power in the US. But I think, yeah, ultimately you can be entering a conversation with somebody about any topic in Germany and you'll ultimately come back to talking about that topic because it, as the Germans say here, it really burns under the fingernails. Up next, how immigration has defined Chancellor Merkel. This is Today Explained. I'm going host personally. Her name's Andrea Salenzi. And she, fact, not a parent.

But she is a great podcast host who brings you stories about all the drama and absurdities and surprises of being in a family. Whether you're raising other humans or being raised by them. Check out Longest Shortest Time wherever you find your podcasts. It's one of Terry Gross's favorite podcasts. That's a fact. I asked Terry once, Terry, what podcast do you like? And she said The Longest Shortest Time. If it's good enough for Terry, it's good enough for you.

Kate, where did Angela Merkel come from? What's her origin story? Angela Merkel grew up in Eastern Germany. Her father was a Protestant pastor in Eastern Germany during communist times. And that's where she grew up, in a parsonage where the doors were always open to people to come in. We know that as a child, she was sort of quite clumsy. She was a little bit socially awkward. She couldn't walk up or down the stairs until quite a late age. It was something that she found physically very, very difficult to do.

Looking at pictures now of how she, when she first came onto the political stage, quite an awkward, slightly gauche woman sometimes, who didn't quite know where to put her hands. And of course, subsequently, she developed this, what we sometimes refer to as a kind of diamond shape, where if you look at any pictures of her, you will notice that she puts her hands in this diamond shape. And she said that her sister had suggested,

why don't you do that in order that you don't have to worry about what to do with your hands in official photo calls and that sort of thing. It's so funny because one of the things I think of when you talk about where to put your hands is when George W. Bush very awkwardly came up to her and like gave her a faux massage at what might have been like a G20 summit or something and she just raised her hands up in the air like in shock. There's Bush walking over to Angela Merkel. He's reaching in. He's about to grab her. He's rubbing her neck.

She's grimacing. That is the Chancellor of Germany disengaging herself from the President of the United States. That's an image of Chancellor Merkel that I'll never forget. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that was a really kind of interesting moment because this was a woman who'd come on the international stage. She wasn't that popular at the beginning at home. But then when people saw that she shone on the international stage and was actually very good for the image of Germany, and because she would do things literally at conferences and kind of knock heads together in a very pragmatic and prudent way. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, really tried to exploit her vulnerabilities.

He got his black Labrador to kind of bound in on her at a meeting one day. This is obviously a famously well-reported incident. And she was scared of dogs because she'd been bitten by one as a child. At a meeting between the two leaders in the President's Sochi residence, Putin brought his dog, Connie. It's obvious by the grin on Putin's face and Merkel's stiffness as the black Labrador sits at her feet that this was an awkward political meeting. The Russian president has since apologized for Connie's invite to the meeting, claiming he didn't know about Merkel's fear. Kate, have you interviewed Chancellor Merkel? What's she like when you talk to her?

Yes, I've met her on a few occasions. She's a very friendly, warm woman, and also quite jokey, quite quick-witted. But what was an interesting experience was, if she did crack a joke, you have this process in Germany whereby interviews have to go through an authorization procedure. Effectively, they go through it with a red pen and remove all the stuff you thought was the best stuff in there, including jokes and side swipes or that type of thing. Yeah, the people around her are very keen to tightly control her image. And she's very unflashy as a person. You know, she lives in a very modest flat in the center of Berlin. And I think there is a certain down-to-earthness about her

that is reflected in the way she has done politics. You don't get the impression that there's a big ego there or that she's in it for herself. Yeah, so how did she go from, you know, awkward young girl who was afraid of walking up and down stairs to the Western democracy's last hope, you know? It's a difficult path to trace. I mean, I think she found herself at home in the world of science. She was a scientist working in a lab on the outskirts of Berlin and on the night that the Berlin Wall came down on November the 9th, 1989. They are here in the thousands. They are here in the tens of thousands. Occasionally

they shout, die Mauer muss weg, the wall must go. This was an evening where she had a weekly date with a girlfriend in a sauna. Going to the sauna is a very common German practice. The night the wall came down, what did Angela Merkel do? She kept this date with the friends. She didn't go with the crowds to the Brandenburg Gate to open up the champagne bottles and chip away at the wall. So that's sort of also something that stays in the memory. And so when exactly does she get into politics? Is it after the wall comes down that she feels inspired to transition from science to politics? Yes, she was persuaded to join politics when the war came down at the age of 35 in the early 90s. And very quickly, she ended up being spotted by Helmut Kohl,

the former chancellor, a big, towering figure in German politics who was in the post for 16 years. Kohl brought her into the party, took her under his wing, and quite quickly she was given ministerial posts. And she was then nicknamed Cole's Machen, Cole's Girl. But of course, quite quickly, Cole's Machen grew up and there was a big party funding scandal, money that it had received, but Cole refused to say where it had come from. So one day, she took the decision to write to the Auguste Daily newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, writing a

letter in which she said that the party had to divorce itself from him if it wanted to have a future. And this basically was almost like her letter of introduction to take over from him. And quite soon afterwards, she took over as head of the CDU 18 years ago. How did he feel about that? He was pretty peeved. And in fact, when Helmut Kohl died not so long ago, his widow did nothing to hide her resentment towards Angela Merkel for effectively stabbing him in the back. But there were a lot of people who at the time, although they were quite horrified by what Merkel had done, recognised in retrospect that she was the person who managed to move the party out of this very sticky situation. Those who refused to accept that the CDU was no longer a gentleman's club soon learned the hard way.

One by one, her competitors had to go. After becoming chancellor in 2005, Merkel took her CDU party on a political journey, many criticized as a shift to the left. So how does immigration become sort of the central issue of her time as chancellor of Germany? Immigration will define her chancellorship, I think it's fair to say. In 2015, there was a lot of movement of migrants coming from war-torn countries,

particularly Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, arriving in Europe. So many are coming now. Macedonia today declared a state of emergency. And it was towards the end of that summer that they were arriving, particularly in Budapest, the capital of Hungary, at the station there. It is just a station, an unwelcome place to transit through if you can. And more and more were coming in. And she said in order to facilitate their arrival and to, because there seemed to be very little willingness

at the time amongst other European countries to take them, she said that she would not close Germany's borders. Now Austria and Germany have opened their borders, those seeking refuge may have more of a chance of reaching their final destination. And then, of refuge may have more of a chance of reaching their final destination. And then, of course, we had about a million of them coming into Germany in 2015. And this was to the shock of a lot of Germans, to the amazement of many, and took the Bundestag, the parliament, by surprise because she hadn't asked for their permission to do this.

Asked in retrospect why she didn't. She said, well, there was no time to do that. She said a humanitarian crisis was awaiting us if we didn't do something about it. So as far as she sees it, she averted a humanitarian crisis by keeping the borders open, allowing people in. If we were to now doubt that we can do this, considering our European responsibility,

our humanitarian responsibility, and our responsibility for Germany, then we wouldn't be the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. But we are, and that's why we can do this. So what is it about Angela Merkel, otherwise such a pragmatist, literally a scientist, that seems to have made an emotional decision when it came to refugees? Well, she will say it was simply the fact that they were there. She said Germany can manage to deal with them. We're a big enough economy.

And even though she didn't say it outright, but there are plenty of people who would say it for her, there was a sense in which this gesture was Germany being able to go some way to make up for the crimes of its past, of the Nazi era. Is there anything about growing up on one side of a wall and feeling that division so fundamentally that may have played into her decision? I think so. I think the symbolism of that wall, that iron curtain, the fact that she

couldn't come out of her own country for many years. And I think one of the first things that she did was to go to America with her husband once the Berlin Wall had fell. And she said, you know, let's not close the borders. And for her, that was very important. Whereas for a lot of people now, though, you know, it would be wrong to see it as being the majority. But a lot of people in Germany today say that she created this sort of very febrile, very stormy situation and new political parties have emerged from it and made Germany seem very unstable compared to how it was a few years ago. So how much have these million refugees cost Angela Merkel politically at this

point? I'd say politically an awful lot. She would say she does not regret it. She does, though, admit to the big problems that Germany has had, being able to process applications, being able to distinguish genuine asylum seekers from migrants. And of course, there have been quite a few incidents and attacks, and particularly a terror attack two years ago on the Christmas market in Berlin, carried out by a Tunisian migrant who had come to Germany in that wave in 2015. And these are images that stay in Germans' minds. Merkel must go, they chant. The refugees may see the German chancellor as their saviour, but these people do not. People's traitor, they shout. This is the backlash against

Germany's generous refugee policy. These are the dissenters, and their numbers are swelling. It sounds like letting in a million refugees may have cost Angela Merkel the leadership of her country. Are there people who think that Germany is better for having done it? Absolutely. There's a lot of people who think Germany is a better place for having done this. More humane, maybe a more tolerant place as a result of it. These people who are fleeing from war, who are fleeing from terror, they have a right for a safe home. And I think it's our duty to provide, to help them find a safe place. But I have to say the country is split on this.

This is an issue that gets people riled up very quickly when you talk about it and it will not go away. I think that history will judge whether the actions of Angela Merkel in 2015 were good for Germany or not. I mean, we talk about her legacy being this immigration crisis, but Angela Merkel, over the course of her years in power, guided Germany through the Greek debt crisis, oversaw all sorts of international conflicts, held the EU together at various points. I mean, is this first female chancellor of Germany who came from East Germany, who came from science, who was afraid of stairs, who then became the most powerful woman in the world, is she doomed to be remembered as someone who let in a million refugees into Germany and then lost her power? I think in the short term, yes. The one criticism of her is that she didn't have a vision. And she

always said she didn't like that word vision, that it was very dangerous for German politicians to have visions. But for some sort of constant vision, at the moment, it's difficult to see that. As you said, the immigrant crisis dominates. But I think equally to say that she'd been pushed out of office is an exaggeration because she's quite carefully choreographing her exit from the political stage, which I think is something that most politicians would love to be able to do, but few manage. Kate Connolly is the Berlin correspondent for The Guardian. I'm Sean Ramos for This Is Today Explained. Thank you.