Angela Merkel: The Unexpected – Angela Merkel – Die Unerwartete (2016)

Directed by: Torsten Körner, Matthias Schmidt | 52 minutes | documentary

If you’re asked who is the most powerful woman in the world right now, chances are your answer is ‘Angela Merkel’. Born in 1954 in Hamburg, West Germany, but raised in the East German countryside, Merkel became the first female chancellor of our eastern neighbors in November 2005 and has since survived the financial crisis of 2008 and the refugee crisis of 2015. Now in Germany When new elections are imminent, she is ‘just’ again the main candidate to succeed herself. Who is Angela Merkel, how did she come to power, how does she stand as the only woman among all those male world leaders and how can her success be explained? The documentary ‘Angela Merkel – The Unexpected’ (2016) by Matthias Schmidt and Torsten Körner attempts to answer these questions. Her political colleagues (from her own CDU, but also from other parties), businessmen, political reporters and people who still know her from the past, but also the ‘Bundeskanslerin’ herself speak to interpret the Angela Merkel phenomenon.

Little Angela was only a few months old when her father, the Reverend Horst Kasner, was appointed to a Protestant church community in East Germany. The family moved to Templin in Brandenburg, where Angela developed into an exemplary but unobtrusive student (who excelled in all subjects except gymnastics) in the tightly ordered society of the GDR. After high school she decided to study physics in Leipzig. In 1977 she married Ulrich Merkel, whose name she still bears, even though the two have already separated after five years. During the 1980s she worked as a scientist in Berlin; there was no indication that she would ever end up in politics. That happened in the year that the Berlin Wall fell, 1989. She ended up at the CDU through the East German civil movement Demokratischer Aufbruch (DA). Even before German reunification in October 1990, she was vice spokesperson for the last GDR government under Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière. She was directly elected as a member of parliament in the first elections in the united Germany and Chancellor Helmut Kohl took her into his cabinet in 1991, as minister for women’s and youth affairs.

Angela’s career then went fast. Not only because she had great file and professional knowledge, but also because she was young, female and East German. In 1994 she became environment minister; previously she had been named vice-chair of the CDU. She continued to thrive under Kohl’s wing, until her party became involved in a 1999 illegal party financing scandal. The scandal cost Kohl’s dreamed successor Wolfgang Schäuble, but Merkel made an unexpected and striking move: with a letter in the Frankfurter Allgemeine she distanced herself from her former protector Kohl. It’s moments like this in Merkel’s career that make this documentary interesting: behind that well-behaved, docile appearance hides a woman who knows exactly when to do or say what. This is also the case when she was more or less passed over as a presidential candidate in 2002 and she and her ‘competitor’ Edmund Stoiber indicated during a breakfast in Wolfratshausen that she agreed with his candidacy: she let us know who was in charge. After some shuffling around, she had so much support within the faction that she was sure she would be the chancellor’s candidate in the next election (in 2005). And so it happened.

Schmidt and Körner follow a second common thread in their documentary; that of the refugee crisis in 2015. Merkel decided to open the borders wide to the flow of refugees, mainly from Syria to Europe. She did so from a humane, Christian standpoint. Her ‘Wirwerving das’, however, came under the necessary criticism from her supporters, especially because of the enormous number of refugees who moved to Germany. Within the EU, Merkel was criticized for her strict stance in the Euro crisis, especially from southern Europe. However, she eventually managed to silence all her critics. How does she do that? There, Schmidt and Körner try to put their finger on it in their film, but they don’t really come to a unanimous answer. She is there at unexpected moments and knows how to take advantage of the situation in her own way. She got into politics by chance, but her willpower and perseverance, her intelligence and insight, diplomatic tact and strategic thinking brought her to the center of power. At the same time, she is modest, listens more than she speaks and is a stable factor. Among all those roosters in world politics, she is perhaps precisely because she is the only woman, ultimately the one who has the pants on.

Angela Merkel is a fascinating woman, who appears to be in more control than we would expect based on her friendly appearance. It’s a shame that this documentary only lasts 52 minutes, because there’s probably more behind this woman.