The Quiet German the Astonishing Rise of Angela Merkel, the Most Powerful Woman in the World
Save paper and follow @newyorker on Twitter Profiles DECEMBER 1, 2014 ISSUE The Quiet German The astonishing rise of Angela Merkel, the most powerful woman in the world. BY GEORGE PACKER Herlinde Koelbl has been photographing Merkel since 1991. Koelbl says that Merkel has always been “a bit awkward,” but “you could feel her strength at the beginning.” PHOTOGRAPHS BY HERLINDE KOELBL / AGENTUR FOCUS / CONTACT PRESS IMAGES summer afternoon at the Reichstag. Soft Berlin light filters down through the great glass dome, past tourists ascending tAhe spiral ramp, and into the main hall of parliament. Half the members’ seats are empty. At the lectern, a short, slightly hunched figure in a fuchsia jacket, black slacks, and a helmet of no-color hair is reading a speech from a binder. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany and the world’s most powerful woman, is making every effort not to be interesting. “As the federal government, we have been carrying out a threefold policy since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis,” Merkel says, staring at the binder. Her delivery is toneless, as if she were trying to induce her audience into shifting its attention elsewhere. “Besides the first part of this triad, targeted support for Ukraine, is, second, the unceasing effort to find a diplomatic solution for the crisis in the dialogue with Russia.” For years, public speaking was visibly painful to Merkel, her hands a particular source of trouble; eventually, she learned to bring her fingertips together in a diamond shape over her stomach. The Reichstag was constructed under Kaiser Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, in the eighteen-eighties, when a newly unified Germany was making its first rise to preëminence in Europe.
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