Merkel: a Rational Scientist in an Irrational World

Since Angela Merkel became Chancellor of Germany in November 2005, several situations have confronted her and shaped her chancellorship: the Eurozone economic problems centering on but not limited to Greece; Putin’s aggressive foreign policy; and Islamic terrorism.

Merkel’s style arises from her intense study of physics and chemistry: she earned her doctorate in 1986. She did not study political science or law, and so comes to government from a rational point of view rather than a professional one.

Being in the center of major geopolitical questions, Merkel has regularly appeared at or near the top of the list, created by Forbes magazine, of the world’s most powerful women. She was at the very top of the list in 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2006. In 2010, she was in fourth place.

Even on the list of the most powerful people - women and men - in the world, Merkel has made impressive appearances. In 2015 and 2012, she was ranked second, behind Vladimir Putin in first place. In 2014 and 2011, she was fourth. In 2013, she was fifth. In 2010, she was sixth.

Merkel entered politics full-time when she was elected, in 1990, as a representative in Germany’s Bundestag, similar to the U.S. House of Representatives. She is and was a member of the CDU political party.

Her election came shortly after the GDR, as East Germany was officially known, dissolved, and shortly after East and West Germany reunited, freeing the millions of Germans who’d lived under the socialist dictatorship in the east.

One factor which shaped Merkel’s worldview is her experience of the GDR, of living under Soviet socialist oppression, of throwing off that oppression, of gaining freedom, and of reuniting Germany.

Vladimir Putin symbolizes that Soviet oppression, and is perhaps a ghost of it. He has been a constant factor in global dynamics ever since Merkel became chancellor. Stefan Kornelius writes:

Putin had been president for five years when she became Chancellor. Later he swapped roles and spent some time as Prime Minister before returning as head of state in 2012. Ever since Merkel became Chairman of the CDU, Putin has been the leader of Russia. Not only that, they are almost the same age - Putin is two years older than her - and have followed similar paths in life, almost as if they were mirror images. Putin spent five years in Dresden, where he witnessed the collapse of the GDR and the Warsaw Pact and became fluent in German. Merkel grew up in the Soviet garrison town of Templin, showed her gift for languages by learning Russian, and like Putin experienced the fall of the Wall at first hand. While Merkel had always glorified the West, and demonstrated her love of freedom by following Western politics, 1989, the great year of change, certainly didn’t transform Putin into an ardent democrat. Whenever Merkel and Putin meet, two world views collide. For Merkel, the fall of the Berlin Wall was a liberating experience, whereas for Putin, a lieutenant colonel in the KGB, it was a deeply traumatic event. He sees the collapse of the Soviet Union as a historic defeat.

Dealing with Putin requires mental toughness, and Merkel has it. It is perhaps no coincidence that the only other woman to deal effectively with Putin also appeared frequently on the Forbes list of the world’s most influential women: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Another question which required both Merkel’s toughness and her ability for scientific analysis was the international financing of the eurozone. Fiscal discipline means enduring some hardships in order to avoid worse hardships. French leader Sarkozy worked with Merkel, but did not last in his office as long as she in hers.

Saying ‘no’ to additional debt is not always popular, but in the long run has proven to be the only path which offers even a slim chance for the survival of the regional and continental economy. Historians Alan Crawford and Tony Czuczka write:

For Merkel, whose position as Europe’s principal decision maker was cemented six months later when she lost her ally Sarkozy in France’s presidential election, the moment of truth for the euro area was the latest incarnation of financial crisis that had rocked her chancellorship almost since the beginning. Merkel was just 18 months into office when she was confronted with the worst global financial meltdown in living memory. She set about resolving each stage of crisis for which there was no playbook – in the banks, the economy, and as a result of euro countries’ debt loads – and she learned along the way. Catapulted to the forefront of European policy making during the euro trauma, it came to define Merkel’s chancellorship even as she struggled for a solution. Some leaders, like Papandreou and Berlusconi, collapse and fall victim to crisis; others like Merkel flourish. Lambasted for delaying, for backtracking, and for refusing to commit more resources to the crisis fight, Merkel showed at Cannes that she can suddenly be decisive, brutally so.

Merkel has been nimble enough to adjust her strategies as needed. Trying to cajole Greece into controlling its profligate spending, in 2010 she at first floated the idea of nudging Greece out of the eurozone; by late 2012, she was working on ways to keep Greece in the eurozone, but using the leverage to persuade it to rein in its extravagant spending and massive debt.

The big question mark looming on the horizon of Merkel’s chancellorship is how Europe will protect itself from Islamic terrorism, and how it can handle the flood of Syrian refugees - many of whom are neither Syrian nor refugees. It is far too early in history to know the outcome of this situation, for good or for ill.

Given her expertise in physics and chemistry, Merkel’s view of both economics and geo-strategic negotiating is a highly rational one. So far, it has been successful.

Angela Merkel: Overcoming Obstacles

Angela Kasner, now better known as Angela Merkel, developed a love for freedom because of her experiences growing up in East Germany: because she knows what it’s like to have little or no freedom.

Growing up the Soviet-sponsored socialist dictatorship, Angela Kasner faced the extra difficulties of being a Jesus follower under an explicitly atheistic government.

People of faith faced a complex and changing situation in East Germany. At times, the persecution was severe and direct: those who spoke about Jesus or read the New Testament were harassed and jailed.

At other times, the government attempted to present itself as tolerant. Jesus followers were allowed to gather for discussion, prayer, worship, and sermons. But they paid a price even during the lenient phases: they were held to menial places of employment, lower wages, and usually denied a chance to study at the university.

Even at the best of times, Jesus followers were subjected to constant surveillance by the Stasi, the East German secret police. Stasi is short for Staatssicherheit, meaning ‘state security.’ The full official name of the spy agency was Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, abbreviated MfS.

Angela’s father was a pastor, and was allowed to speak to groups during the lenient phases. But he was always subject to the pressure of the government, which proclaimed atheism as the official belief of the nation. Historian Stefan Kornelius writes:

Young Angela Kasner’s world was quite straightforward. It consisted of her mother, father, brother and sister, the Waldhof and its various businesses, and the road outside. Sometimes Angela crossed the road to go to the nearby shop and wait for her father, who was usually out and about. “I didn’t venture any farther,” she said. As a little girl she didn’t go to a creche or kindergarten, and was afraid of horses – these are Angela Merkel’s earliest memories. The Waldhof, a complex of residential and farm buildings, storehouses and workshops, was like an island in the idyllic little town of Templin. In 1957 her father, Horst Kasner, was asked to set up a college for Church administration, later known as the Pastoral College, and act as its head teacher. Curates and pastors would visit the Waldhof for several weeks to train or attend seminars on preaching. The Waldhof was an important institution for the Protestant Church in the State of Berlin-Brandenburg – it could be claimed that every pastor in the Church at the time would have been taught by Horst Kasner at some point in his life.

Angela decided that she would work against the official policies of the government, but quietly. She was determined that her personal faith would not prevent her from studying at the university.

She had declined to take part in the Jugendweihe - the communist party’s official ‘coming of age’ ceremony for young people - and instead sought the rite of confirmation among her fellow believers. At school, although she was not a vocal revolutionary, she did make comments which could be interpreted as being critical of the government; the university initially denied her admission for this reason.

Using her personal networks and those of her father, using her determination, and using her skills at negotiating and persuading, she managed to gain admission to the University of Leipzig in 1973.

At the Universität Leipzig, Angela Merkel (she had married by this time) became fluent in the Russian language, but her major fields of study were chemistry and physics. She earned her doctorate in these fields.

Her desire for freedom manifested itself in her desire to travel. Citizens of the Soviet-dominated ‘satellite’ countries were allowed to journey only to a small and specific set of destinations, and then only under close supervision and under certain conditions.

Even under those conditions, however, Angela Merkel wanted to see as much of the world as she could. Historians Alan Crawford and Tony Czuczka write:

As a young woman, Angela Kasner would set out from East Berlin each summer on a pilgrimage to the furthermost reaches of where it was permitted to go. While others left to tend the fruit trees and berry bushes of their countryside dachas, Angela traveled south through Dresden, where the wartime remains of the Baroque Frauenkirche were visible from the railway station, on to the faded capital of the Czechoslovak Republic, where the Prague Spring had long since reverted to winter. From there, she went to Bratislava on the Danube river, which formed the border with Austria and the unattainable West, then on to Budapest, where she occasionally mingled with the few Western visitors who visited; some told her the city’s parliament building and river setting reminded them of far-off London.

Sometimes, those who have always had much liberty love it the least, because they haven’t experienced life without it.

And sometimes, those who’ve had the least liberty love it the most.

Having inherited both faith and courage from her parents, Angela Merkel gained admission to the university when circumstances suggested that she’d spend her life doing menial labor; she travelled as far as possible, stretching the narrow confines which the socialist dictatorship sought to impose upon her.

At that time, she was a scientist, spending her days with chemistry and physics. She did not like the harsh rule of communists, but was also not a revolutionary, and did not plan the end of Soviet-style socialism.

She did not know, and nobody else knew, that within a few years, the oppressive government would topple, and that she would eventually become the leader of a new and free Germany.

Restarting Germany: Adenauer Discovers the Link Between Liberty and Prosperity

When we read that Konrad Adenauer was the first chancellor of modern Germany, like reading that George Washington was the first president of the United States, the honor may overshadow the difficulty of such a task.

Both leaders oversaw a nation damaged by war and viewed suspiciously by other countries.

Adenauer became chancellor in 1949. Germany’s major cities were still largely piles of rubble. The workforce was undersized because so many people had died during the war.

Not only did Germany have to rebuild its infrastructure, but it had to persuade the victorious Allies to let it do so. The western Allies - England, France, and the United States - had merged their three portions of Germany together to form West Germany.

The Soviet occupational zone, East Germany, had no chance to experience any type of political or economic liberty. It was under the harsh domination of the socialist occupational forces.

The western Allies had, in early 1949, all the power in West Germany. The German government could do nothing without the permission of the “high commissioners” who represented the Allied governments.

Adenauer had first to create a plan to rebuild Germany and to jumpstart its economy. Then he had to persuade the Allies to let him act on those plans: not an easy task.

The most probable outcome was the Adenauer would fail to develop successful plans, and would not be allowed by the Allies to act on them anyway. Germany would probably become a “third-world” nation: a historic failure.

Nobody expected much from Adenauer, or from Germany. As historian Hans-Peter Schwarz writes,

Contemporaries and historians have generally agreed that the first four years of Adenauer’s chancellorship were the most important of his time in government. Phrases such as ‘laying the foundations,’ ‘setting the course,’ and ‘founding years of the republic’ have frequently been used to describe these early years. Though at the time it was generally recognized that the situation facing him was complex and fraught with difficulties, this fact is often forgotten in retrospect. Adenauer’s fourteen-year chancellorship remains a source of considerable fascination, also for historians. One consequence has been a tendency to exaggerate Adenauer’s prospects for success in 1949 and to underestimate the problems he faced. In fact, in autumn 1949 failure seemed rather more likely than success.

Difficult decisions awaited Adenauer. Nobody could tell him with certainty what steps to take to rescue the nation’s devastated economy. No results were guaranteed.

Relying on his appointee Ludwig Erhard, the new government cut personal income taxes drastically. For many citizens, tax rates fell by more than half.

Adenauer also removed many price controls. Sellers were allowed to experiment with different price levels to see which worked best. After years of dictatorship, the economy was finally free.

These two policies - lowering taxes and removing price controls - fueled what economists call the Wirtschaftswunder or ‘economic miracle.’ When West Germany seemed destined to slowly slide into a “third world” condition, it instead became one of the largest economic and manufacturing powers in the world.

Adenauer’s political opponents inside Germany - from the competing political parties - weren’t happy with his administration, but they figured that they would simply wait until Adenauer’s time in office was over.

Konrad Adenauer would, however, be Germany’s chancellor for a surprising fourteen years. Together with Ludwig Erhard, he kept the Germans free from excessive regulation and taxation. Adenauer’s policies energized the German economy throughout the 1950s and made it the fastest-growing on the planet.

The fact that he was almost 75 years old when he became chancellor did not get in the way of Adenauer’s plans to make Germany the manufacturing the economic giant of Europe, and a powerful financial force around the world. Hans-Peter Schwarz writes:

Adenauer’s age itself led many observers to assume that he would be no more than a transitional figure. In the early days this fact helped him. During the formation of his government, opponents and rivals were able to console themselves with the thought that time would soon eliminate an old man who had been under stress for years and was now on an exhausting political treadmill.

More than 50 years later, economists still study Adenauer’s years in office, from 1949 to 1963, as one of the most productive eras. His policies were an unprecedented success in economic growth, and manifested the link between personal political liberty and prosperity for citizens at every income level.

The Circumstances Leading to the Berlin Wall

When the fighting in Europe ended in April and May 1945, the victorious Allies - England, the USSR, and the USA - divided Germany into four zones, one for each of the Allies (including France).

The capital city Berlin lay in the Soviet zone. It was likewise divided into four sectors. This meant that the British, French, and American sectors of Berlin were an “island” surrounded on all sides by Soviet-controlled territory.

The original vision included open borders between the four zones of Germany, and between the four sectors of Berlin. The USSR quickly made it clear, however, that it was eager to restrict or stop the people’s movement across these borders.

The French, Americans, and British merged their zones and allowed them form a sovereign state, The Federal Republic of Germany, known more commonly as “West Germany.” Likewise, the corresponding three sectors of Berlin were merged to form “West Berlin.”

Eventually, the Soviets cut off all movement into or out of West Berlin by car, truck, bus, or railroad. This was done suddenly in June 1949. The USSR hoped that West Berlin would collapse when all supplies, included food, medicine, and fuel were denied.

The western Allies responded with the massive effort known as the “Berlin Airlift,” a technologically amazing string of round-the-clock flights, bringing nearly every imaginable supply to the city: gasoline, coal, clothing, medicine, newspapers, etc.

The logistics were complex, precise, and breathtaking in scope: airplanes landed every thirty seconds in Berlin. Each plane rolled to a stop, was quickly unloaded, and took off again to land in West Germany, take on new cargo, and repeat the process.

Everything was precisely timed: a twelve-man crew could unload ten tons of coal from an airplane in five minutes and forty-five seconds. This exact timing was maintained for thousands of flights, with hundreds of airplanes, connecting several different airbases in West Germany to the two landing airports in West Berlin.

The Soviet blockade lasted from June 1948 to May 1949. The USSR decided to end the blockade, because the airlift had shown that the western Allies were resolved to support West Berlin, and the airlift had effectively negated the Soviet effort to isolate the city and starve it into surrender.

From the time the war ended, through the 1950s, the Communists made it ever more difficult for people to move in or out of the Soviet occupational zone, or ‘East Germany,’ as it came to be known. They likewise kept tightening the borders between East Berlin and the rest of the city.

The USSR was aware that East Germany was losing population. The workforce there was highly skilled, and the Soviets depended on it to augment and enhance the industrial and technological base in Russia.

The continual trickle of scientific expertise out of East Germany posed a strategic problem for the communists. The borders around East Germany, and around East Berlin, had to be sealed. Vice President Dick Cheney describes the events in early 1961:

Documents in the Soviet archives released since the collapse of the Soviet Union detail Khrushchev’s plan. In a meeting with the President of the Supreme Soviet on May 26, 1961, Khrushchev laid out his scheme for isolating West Berlin and shutting off the flow of refugees from the East. He did not believe the Americans or any of the other Western powers would stop him, and as he saw it the situation was dire: thousands of East Germans citizens were fleeing the Soviet Bloc through West Berlin. Khrushchev planned to notify Kennedy that the Soviets and the East Germans would sign a treaty by the end of the year closing all corridors of access to West Berlin, with or without U.S. approval.

In Khrushchev’s estimation, Kennedy was young and indecisive. Khrushchev had scored a tactical victory over Kennedy at the Bay of Pigs, when Kennedy launched the invasion of Cuba, but then didn’t authorize the Air Force to support the soldiers landing on the beaches there.

The troops who hoped to liberate Cuba from the Soviet-backed communist dictatorship instead found themselves easy targets without the air support which had been promised to them and on which they had counted. Kennedy’s halfway measure - launch an invasion but then fail to sustain it - created the impression the mind of Khrushchev that Kennedy was passive and not ready to stand solidly in the face of the USSR’s socialist aggression.

Khrushchev and Kennedy met face-to-face in Vienna in June 1961. The Soviet leader was full of bombast, and the young U.S. president miserably endured the meeting.

Khrushchev left the meeting confident that he could do as he pleased, and the American leader would organize little or no resistance.

In August 1961, in a massive surprise operation, soldiers built a wall encircling West Berlin. At dawn, those who were in that half of the city found that they could not leave. Whether they were permanent residents or mere visitors, they were confined.

Likewise, those in East Berlin could not go to West Berlin. Family or friends who were merely spending the night with loved ones in East Berlin suddenly found themselves to be permanent residents of the Soviet-controlled half of the city.

For the next three decades, very few people crossed in either direction between the two halves of the city. Of those who did cross, some did so legally, others found ways to sneak or escape from East Berlin into West Berlin.

Tragically, many died attempting this escape, shot by socialist guards who patrolled along the Berlin Wall.

The wall became a symbol of Soviet socialism. The final opening of the wall, in November 1989, and its demolition in 1990, became a symbol of the freedom which came to the East Germans, largely as a result of pressure from NATO and from President Ronald Reagan’s assertive response to the USSR’s bullying.

Rebuilding a Nation: Adenauer Despite the Circumstances

Konrad Adenauer became the first postwar leader of modern Germany in 1949, and the country’s first freely-elected leader since the early 1930s. After a dozen years of brutal Nazi oppression, the people had a chance to return to individual political liberty.

To regain this freedom, the nation would first have to rebuild itself physically: its industries and infrastructure.

Amidst the devastation caused by massive bombing, that prerequisite would have been difficult enough by itself: the cities and factories were largely destroyed. But Adenauer faced an additional challenge: he had to first persuade the western Allies - England, France, and the United States - to trust Germany.

The Allies controlled Germany as part of the immediate postwar arrangement. When combat ended in 1945, there was lots of chaos and no functional government, and the Allied presence was necessary.

By 1949, the nation was minting its own coins again, and the time had arrived for bits of independence to be granted to the Germans. Until then, the ruling power was in the hands of the “high commissioners,” a group of leaders appointed by the Allies. It was with them that Adenauer would have to bargain, as Horst Osterheld writes:

Adenauer began by setting himself five goals: the restoration of the economy and of good order internally, the reclamation of political capability, the readoption into the family of nations and the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in the camp of the free nations. He embarked on these goals only one day after his first Cabinet had taken the oath on 21 September 1949, by beginning to negotiate the Petersberg Agreement with the High Commissioners, who at that time had all the power in their hands. The outstanding item was the dismantling of the great German industrial concerns. Had this been carried out according to plan, things would have looked hopeless for the German economy. Adenauer fought for every workshop and every machine. The result repaid his efforts: eighteen large works were struck off the dismantling list, including the Bayer works, the chemical factories of Hüls and Gelsenberg, the Thyssen foundries, the Klöckner works, the Bochum corporation and Ruhrstahl A.G.; in Berlin all the factories were actually preserved. A gigantic success, “almost as important psychologically as materially, that is, to the morale of our leading industrialists and the enthusiasm of our working population.”

The tentative plans by the Allies to largely disassemble German industrial capability was halted, and West Germany began to work ceaselessly on what textbooks now call the “economic miracle” - the transformation from nearly complete wartime destruction to economic superpower in little more than a decade.

Those living in East Germany had a more difficult time. The occupying Soviet army dismantled research laboratories and even entire factories, crated them up, and sent to to Russia. East Germany had been home, e.g., to the rocket development center at Peenemünde, which was technologically ahead of anything the USSR had.

In West Germany, the people had found a reliable leader in Adenauer. He had bravely and vocally opposed Hitler, and had paid the price because of it for twelve long years. He’d been arrested and narrowly escaped death.

Adenauer would lead Germany for well over a decade, from a nation decimated by war to a leading world economic power. He was on good terms with U.S. presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. He developed working relationships with other European nations, who relied on his intentions to develop peace and freedom.