REVIEW: ‘The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel’ by Kati Marton
Image courtesy of Simon & Schuster / Provided by official site.
The timing of Kati Marton’s new biography of Angela Merkel is quite auspicious. The German chancellor recently left the top post, leaving behind her legacy as the leader of Europe and a stalwart defender of democracy, and this reflective book, called The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel, allows readers the chance to look back at Merkel’s upbringing, her rise to political fame, her unprecedented chancellorship and how the issues she cared most about might play out in the near future.
Marton’s biography, out now from Simon & Schuster, does not include an interview with Merkel herself. As mentioned several times throughout the book, the chancellor leads a private life and has generally refused to let the media get too close. This includes Marton, who must piece together the life and legacy of Merkel by considering her public record, interviews with associates and what the chancellor has allowed in previous interviews and statements. This does keep Merkel at arm’s length throughout the 300-plus pages of The Chancellor, but Marton is skilled at taking what she has and attempting to draw a full picture nonetheless. In fact, Merkel’s penchant for privacy — with few details about her husband, her Berlin apartment, her upbringing — becomes a central theme of Marton’s book, with the author questioning why the chancellor is so present and yet so simultaneously absent.
This reviewer’s takeaway is simple: Merkel is refreshingly focused on the work and wishes to be judged on those accomplishments (and failures). In today’s media marketplace, politicians have become celebrities (or already were celebrities), and running for public office seems like a branding exercise akin to an international soccer player coming to the United States to play for Major League Soccer. Merkel is not like this; her strengths come alive behind closed doors, person to person, marathon session after marathon session of hard work.
The biography moves in a mostly chronological order, from her upbringing in East Germany during the Cold War, to the fall of the Berlin Wall and her new sense of liberation, to her early days as a scientist, to her transformation into a politician and eventual rise through the party ranks. The bulk of the book is centered on her years as chancellor, including her time with U.S. presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump (the recent history of her final years is mostly based on her COVID-19 response rather than Joe Biden).
The thesis of the book is that Merkel’s unique life, as the daughter of a pastor and child growing up in the Soviet-controlled East, helped to inform her future political goals, which included a defense of democracy, a reconciliation with the Jewish community, a stressing of one Europe, a kindness toward refugees, an emphasis on economic power and a studious approach to diplomacy. In fact, her early years as a scientist and academic led her to extensively research each world problem she faced as chancellor. She would read books, crunch data and learn histories, all so she was prepared to sit at the negotiating table with a complete knowledge of the situation being discussed.
Despite the chancellor’s dedication to middle-of-the-road democracy, Europe has still seen a rise in fascism, anti-Semitism, and anti-immigrant beliefs and laws. That’s not her fault per say, but it is a complication to her legacy.
In fact, at a time when a Russian invasion of Ukraine seems imminent, one wonders what Merkel would have done in these tumultuous days and how her unparalleled skills would be employed to at least keep the status quo. She had an adversarial, but workable relationship with Vladimir Putin, speaking to him in Russian and knowing personally what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. There are likely many reasons why Putin believes he’s able to pull off this invasion, but one wonders would this outcome be altered with a different person in the chancellor’s seat or at the head of Europe (as Marton alludes to in the book, France’s Emmanuel Macron is now the figurehead of Europe).
On private matters, Marton is able to fill in some blanks. The most revealing and worthy are those about Merkel’s upbringing, including her relationship with her father and mother, and what life was like on the eastern side of the wall. The other considerations — her marriage, her house, her grocery shopping — are decent trivia to paint the full picture, but they also feel oddly intrusive. Merkel clearly does not want the spotlight on anything but her policies and public statements, so a far-reaching biography feels somewhat overly personal, but that could be the main subject’s unwillingness to play along, which then sets up an undeniable mystique about her vacations and downtime.
Marton is a skilled writer who knows Merkel well and is able to synthesize her life and career into a digestible tome that is fully researched and compellingly explained. The Chancellor is ostensibly a biography about one woman, but at its heart is a larger narrative about Europe in the 21st century and how diplomacy can hep solve global problems. Thus, the lessons of Marton’s book are abundant. As the final pages arrive, and Merkel leaves public life, one gets the feeling that an era has ended, and an epoch of uncertainty has begun.
The Chancellor is worth reading for numerous reasons, not the least of which that it might prove instructive for the days and years ahead.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel. By Kati Marton. 368 pages. Simon & Schuster. $30. Click here for more information.
