Merkel was born in Hamburg, West Germany, in 1954. Her father, Horst Kasner, was an official in the Lutheran Church, one of the few institutions that continued operating in both Germanys after the postwar division of the country. Angela, the oldest of three children, was raised on the outskirts of Templin, a cobblestoned town in the pine forests of Brandenburg, north of Berlin. Merkel’s upbringing in a Communist state was as normal as she could make it. Being the daughter of a Protestant minister from the West carried both privileges and liabilities. Angela was physically clumsy—she later called herself “a little movement idiot.” At the age of ?ve, she could barely walk downhill without falling. Merkel was a brilliant, ferociously motivated student. When Angela was in the eighth grade, Benn recruited her for the Russian Club and coached her to compete in East Germany’s Russian-language Olympiad. In 1970, an incident exposed the fragile standing of the bürgerlich Kasner family.

Merkel studied physics at Leipzig University and earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry in Berlin. She was allowed to pursue graduate studies, in no small part because she never ran afoul of the ruling party. People who have followed her career point to Merkel’s scienti?c habit of mind as a key to her political success.