The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel

In her experience, language cannot be trusted. Words are weapons to be deployed cautiously.

This is her power move: letting an alpha male keep talking and waiting patiently as he self-destructs.

Her description of a perfect day sounds perfectly ordinary: “I will sleep long, have a relaxed breakfast. Then I’ll go out for some fresh air, chat with my husband or with friends. I might go to the theater, to the opera, or listen to a concert. If I’m rested, I might read a good book. And I would cook dinner. I like cooking!” These are the dreams of a person who had not been truly free for the last sixteen years. Though no longer young, Merkel is spry enough to enjoy the simplest of pleasures: country rambles, leisurely meals with (nonpolitical) friends, and music and books instead of charts, polls, and position papers. These pleasures will not replace the satisfaction of outsmarting a foe with her legendary stamina and command of facts. But, never one to ruminate over feelings, she will observe her own reaction to this new life with a scientist’s curiosity. In the short term, she is likely to spend time near her childhood home in the province of Brandenburg, where she first learned to love nature and which she still regards as her Heimat, or spiritual home. She’ll travel, too. Among her stated dreams is to fly over the Andes Mountains—an idealized destination; a metaphor for freedom.

A woman in power has more urgent business to attend to than her ego.

Never hate your enemies; it affects your judgment.

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. Thomas Mann, German-American author (1875–1955)

If everyone just sweeps outside their door, the whole village will be clean,” Merkel said sometimes, quoting Goethe.

There is strength in calm”).

You are only able to love in the first place if you love yourself, if you believe in yourself, if you know yourself. Only then can you approach the other.… Love can only come if you are clear about who you are.

Merkel brought a set of core values to the office: her deep but private faith, an unshakable creed of duty and service; a belief in Germany’s permanent debt to Jews for what she has always referred to as the Shoah; her scientist’s devotion to precise, evidence-based decision-making; and a visceral loathing of dictators who imprison their own people. Freedom of expression and movement are more than hackneyed phrases for a politician who spent her first thirty-five years lacking both.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.” —Marie Curie (1867–1934)

Be self-confident. Don’t let others take the bread

With statistics, graphs, and charts, the country's highest-ranking soccer fan proposed a training plan for the speechless coach.

Trained by the KGB to spread confusion and doubt, actual diplomacy was not part of the Russian’s repertoire.

In Donetsk, a major industrial center, pro-Russian militia in camouflage and ersatz military gear stormed the local legislature, brandishing Soviet and czarist-era banners (with even a Confederate flag for added nostalgia).

Maskirovka (masquerade) is a technique developed by the Russian military in the early part of the last century that can be summarized by three words: deception, denial, and disinformation.

In der Ruhe liegt die Kraft”—“There is strength in calm

As we shall see, for the rest of her life, the Shoah—as she [Angela Merkel] has always referred to the Holocaust—would be central to her leadership and to her conviction that Germany’s debt to the Jewish people was permanent.

We need to look unblinkered at the truth; the greater honesty we show, the freer we are to face the consequences. The root of the tyranny was Hitler’s immeasurable hatred of our Jewish compatriots. Hitler never concealed this hatred from the public but made the entire nation a tool of it.

Both Merkel and Obama read Yuval Harari’s somewhat ponderous Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind for pleasure. And though their tastes are widely different, both find escape and relaxation in music.

Not only in private, but in politics, too.

Hatred is not a crime.