Freedom: Memoirs 1954–2021

Merkel was touted as the most powerful woman in the world from 2005 to 2021, when she served as chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. In her memoir, the scholar of quantum chemistry narrates in a dispassionate voice her remarkable rise and reign as Germany’s first woman chancellor. Although born in Hamburg in West Germany, she lived her first 35 years in communist East Germany, where her father, a Lutheran minister, was assigned a pastorate. She describes a lighthearted youth gradually learning the limits and strictures of a closed socialist state. Her focus falls mostly on her life after Germany’s reunification in October 1990. She tells of her first political steps, working for and becoming a party spokesperson for a Democratic Awakening, and then being elected to the German federal parliament. Ever rising, she names people she encountered on her way to the top; once the memoir reaches the apex of Merkel’s power, it recounts the challenging decisions of leadership and her interactions with other world leaders.