Freedom

The most important book of the year, publishing 26 November 2024For 16 years, Angela Merkel was Chancellor of Germany. She led the country through numerous crises, shaping both Germany and international politics with her actions and attitudes. In her memoirs, co-written with her long-time political advisor Beate Baumann, she reflects on her life in two German states – 35 years in the German Democratic Republic, 35 years in reunited Germany.More intimately than ever before, she talks about her childhood, youth, and studies in the GDR and the dramatic year of 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and her political life began. She also shares recollections and insights from her meetings and conversations with the world's most powerful people. Discussing significant national, European, and international turning points, she shows how the decisions were made that shaped our times. Her book offers a unique insight into the inner workings of power – and is a compelling plea for freedom.

Angela Merkel, who served as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 2005 to 2021, was the first woman in the country's most powerful office. Born in 1954 in Hamburg and raised in the GDR, where she studied physics and earned a doctorate in physics, she was elected to the German Bundestag in 1990. From 1991 to 1994, she was the Federal Minister for Women and Youth; from 1994 to 1998, Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety; and from 2000 to 2018, she was the leader of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. In 2021, she ended her active political career.

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