00:30Always be more than you appear, and never appear to be more than you are.
00:37Angela Merkel
00:38German stateswoman and Chancellor Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kastner on July 17, 1954, in Hamburg, Germany.
00:47The daughter of a Lutheran pastor and teacher who moved his family east to pursue his theology studies,
00:54Merkel grew up in a rural area north of Berlin in the then-German Democratic Republic.
01:00She studied physics at the University of Leipzig, earning a doctorate in 1978,
01:05and later worked as a chemist at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry, Academy of Sciences, from 1978 to 1990.
01:13In October 1990, the former East German states were reunified with the rest of Germany.
01:20Two months later, Merkel stood for election at the first post-reunification parliamentary elections
01:27and was elected to the Bundestag for the constituency of Stralsund, Nordvallpoolman Rügen.
01:35In 1998, her mentor, Kohl, was defeated in the elections and stepped down accordingly.
01:41Weeks later, Merkel was appointed Secretary General of the CDU and became the first woman to attain that post in party history.
01:51She achieved even greater success in 2000, when she was elected to replace CDU leader Wolfgang Schabel,
01:59becoming the first female leader of a German party.
02:03Her election came as a surprise to many, as CDU was normally viewed as a male-dominated, socially conservative party.
02:12She proved to be an efficient leader and earned the loyal support of the citizens.
02:17In 2005, she challenged the Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder of the Social Democrats, SPD, in the national elections.
02:26In her campaigns, she stated that the main aim of her government would be to reduce unemployment.
02:33In the elections, she narrowly defeated the incumbent Chancellor, who refused to concede power.
02:40However, the CDU agreed to form a coalition with the Social Democrats, SPD,
02:46and Merkel was declared the Chancellor of Germany, the first female to assume this position.
02:53In 1977, at the age of 23, Angela Kastner married physics student Ulrich Merkel and took his surname.
03:01The marriage ended in divorce in 1982.
03:05Her second and current husband is quantum chemist and professor Joachim Sauer,
03:10who has largely remained out of the media spotlight.
03:13They first met in 1981, became a couple later, and married privately on the 30th of December, 1998.
03:22She has no children, but Sauer has two adult sons from a previous marriage.
03:28Angela Merkel assumed office as the Chancellor on the 22nd of November, 2005.
03:33She focused upon strengthening Germany's foreign relations, and signed the agreement for the Transatlantic Economic Council on the 30th of April, 2007, at the White House.
03:45She also signed a declaration with India, which greatly boosted Indo-German relations.
03:51She was elected to a second term in 2009.
03:53She further strengthened Germany's ties with India, and the two countries held their first intergovernmental consultations in New Delhi in 2011.
04:02She has also led seven trade delegations to China since assuming office in 2005.
04:08A much-respected politician by now, she easily won a third term as the Chancellor,
04:13and the third cabinet of Angela Merkel was sworn in on the 17th of December, 2013.
04:19In August 2015, she reportedly indicated that she would run for a fourth term in 2017.
04:26As the Chancellor, one of the priorities was the strengthening of Transatlantic Economic Relations.
04:32Merkel played an important role in strengthening the foreign relations between Germany and India,
04:38when she made a joint declaration in 2006 with the then Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh,
04:45to focus on future cooperation between the two countries in the fields of energy, science and technology, and defense.
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