essential issues of our time, because what we have before us is an extraordinary opportunity, and that is to usher in the most prosperous era in all of our history. and that's sayi lot f a country with a history like ours and the full program is available to watch online at

now about chancellor merkel's book. you know, she's she's been a famously private person. so her willingness to tell her story is an event in itself. and what an extraordinary story it is. as she says in the prolog, she's actually lived two lives. her first 35 years under dictator ship in communist east germany and her second 35 in the democracy of a reunified germany. in the first, she grew up the child of a lutheran pastor studied physics and became a

researcher at the academy of sciences in east berlin. in the second she entered politics rose through the ranks of the center right christian democratic union party and led germany as its first woman chancellor for 16 years from. 2005 to 2021. she she became not just the dominant politician in germany, but in europe with the reputation for pragmatism, reliability and integrity. recall for a minute the major challenges she confronted as chancellor a global financial crisis, europe's debt crisis, russia's annexation of crimea. a refugee crisis, and the covid pandemic. some of her decisions in office drew controversy. then and have again. more recently, amid germany's current political and economic struggles.

but in defending her actions, she offers insights into her own thinking and expert lessons in the conduct of politics and diplomacy. to appreciate the sheer length of her tenure as germany's leader, just consider that she dealt with four u.s. presidents, four french presidents and five british prime ministers. one of those american presidents, of course, was our 44th barack obama. his israel, his relationship with the chancellor developed into one of great mutual respect. he awarded her the u.s. medal of freedom in 2011. and by the time he left the white house, he was describing her as probably his closest international partner. she, in turn, writes in her memoir about how much she valued his analytical abilities and his counsel. what a special privilege and

honor to have them both on stage here. now. one, one, one reminder again before they come out, the chancellor will be speaking in german and the translation will come through these earpieces that i hope all of you have received. just turn up the volume on the side. if you find yours isn't working. try to signal one of the ushers or go to the back and get another one. and at the end of the event, please leave your device on your chair. so, ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming chancellor merkel and president obama. hey.

hello, everybody. it is good to see all of you. i am not oprah winfrey. this is not my day job. but i am making a special exception for an extraordinary leader and a dear friend of. i also want to give a shout out to politics and prose. for those of you who just went online and just got tickets but aren't familiar with politics and prose, one of the great independent bookstores in the country and it has a special place in my heart because when i wrote my first book, angela dreams from my father.

i was fresh out of law school and i went on a tour and basically for people showed up at every venue. but politics and prose was one of the places where i got the best turnout. so i got that was probably about let's say, 30 years ago. so i've got a lot of a lot of my heart for politics and prose. well, i love you back, but we are now, just as you heard during the introductions, a couple of logistical issues. one is that my friend, the chancellor, is going to be speaking in german. you should know that her english is excellent and that we never use translators. but she is also a very precise

person and wants to make sure that she gets things exactly right. so just in case you're wondering, i'm going. i've got my earpiece in as well because my german if you think i'm just going to understanding exactly what she's saying, that's not the case. and the second thing is, some of you submitted questions. we're going to have a conversation for the first hour and then in the last half hour, i actually have a list of questions that you have submitted, and i am going to read them as best i can. all right. so with that, the star of the show, angela, it is wonderful to see you. i hope you are doing well. and congratulations on finishing a book. i finished a couple of books. i've got one that i haven't finished and it's a terrible

feeling. people ask me sometimes, do you like writing? i said, no, i like having written. so it's a great accomplishment and it was wonderful. reflection from you of this extraordinary sweep of history that you witnessed and so, if you don't mind, i thought we'd start, understand and believe in some of your earlier days. i think for for so many people here, there's a lot of curiosity about life in the gdr and in east germany. and, you know, you were born and raised during the height of the cold war. many people here weren't born when the berlin wall came down. and so maybe don't have a sense of both.

what life was like in the gdr at the time, but also the remarkable transition that took place so rapidly during reunification and what that meant not just for germany, but what also meant for europe. but but i'm maybe going to start with a more personal reflection from you about. you writing that growing up in east germany, there was a joy and happiness and you maintained a certain lightheartedness and i think for those outside, certainly in the west at the time, the perception was everything is gray and grim and tough and, you know, give me a sense of of how when you were writing and looking back on those times, you.

understood the society there, your family, its ability to. enjoy life and parts of hate fully and how that trends and ended up marking the rest of your political career and how you saw the world when you just took a yellow on side of it. until this time. yeah. thank you. and may i say to all of you good evening and i'm earnest. i'm very pleased to see that we have such a wonderful crowd that we were able to sit here in front of you. and it's a it was a little bit easier for me in writing this because i wrote it together with my long term political advisor. so that was a great help to me. but we are coming back to your question. what it's true. i lived for 35 years in the form

in what was then the gdr in former east germany. and i had this happy experience to see reunification of east and west germany and i describe my youth, my younger years, my childhood as a happy childhood, although growing up in this state was not so happy because it was a dictatorship. and why was it still a happy childhood? and that's something that i feel isn't really properly understood in the west, in what was then west germany, because even in a dictatorship you can live surrounded by friends, by your family, by your siblings. i had a wonderful environment in which i grew up in the countryside and i actually grew up on the estate part of an institution that catered to people who were impaired, who

had problems, mental problems. and my father was head of an institution of a wider circle for pastors, for the clergymen. so it was a protected, safe haven, if you like. that made me stronger, make me strong enough to actually adopt a certain resilience with regard to the state very early, we properly understood what we were allowed to say within the house and what we were able to say outside. so you always lived on the edge in this dictatorship at news, said something wrong had you had an idea and inspiration which didn't fit into what the state had prescribed for everyone? then you could run into trouble. but i was happy enough to have this stable environment. my parents could actually help me to navigate these difficult obstacles and still well be a

person who was light hearted, who was in many ways sort of somebody who was not burdened down by this. there's a little. overload. the translation of what the. so your father was a pastor, lutheran pastor, and i'm just curious, as you were growing up, it clearly there was space for religious practice inside the gdr. was there that did your father have to be careful and constrain himself in terms of how he preach the gospel, how he practiced his ministry, what were there? were there moments in which you remember as a child or as a young adult thinking, okay, we have to be concerned about how we express our our christian

faith. is not those times falls as a child of a pastor. it was a little bit easier for me than for other children who were also christians, because coming from a parsons family, people would automatically assume that you were a christian to a christian child. and from time to time they asked me sometimes we had to stand up in class and say what our parents profession was. and the gdr when you were the child of a laborer, so to speak, of the working class, you were on top position farmers, second position. if you are came from a craftsman's, a family a little bit less important and then obviously academics was even worse. so you had a letter attached and then you were called up, for example, when a teachers came from a different school and you had to say clearly to everyone

what your father's profession was, which was quite unpleasant sometimes. and with my father, i had to be careful because he was actually working and father learning institution for parsons and he had a copy, a photocopier which people who i had that were almost enemies of the state because you could copy something that was not quite in line with what the state prescribed. so he was automatically a little bit suspicious. he sometimes russian dissidents such as solzhenitsyn's works were copied by him, sometimes he had to answer to the state security. they summoned him so for him to it was life on the edge very much. but on the other hand, he very consciously came from west germany to the gdr after he had finished his studies because he felt very keenly that even the christians in the gdr needed pastoral guidance. that was very unusual. people usually would flee from

the east to the west and this is why i was born in hamburg in west germany. many didn't understand this. how could this happen that i then ended up in the gdr so as you're getting older, you have a household that is full of ideas. some of which you don't always share outside ideas about your faith, ideas about politic, because it sounded like you had some there was political background of your family, but you decided to go into science and you should all of you should know that. one of the things that i enjoyed most about working with chancellor merkel is she's very much the scientist. it's all about facts and analysis directly, i think it's fair to say it was.

that that i get t sometimes about being spotlight angela's more spotlight and but but but i'm curious as to whether your pursuit of science including quantum chemistry eventually was in part because working in the sciences gave you its own freedom that you didn't have to be as careful about saying the wrong thing or. hewing to a certain ideology, because science was science and was respected and you and i must clearly that had an influence on how you saw the world. it also helped you meet your husband so he did give me a

sense of of how that pan became your focus. now. yeah, it's well, and there's one thing i should say. first to the president to is very precise. he is a lawyer. i know. but you well, i don't think that you can carry the day in arguing with him or discussing matters with him when you're not precise. that was what i liked about it, that he always was very clear in his analysis and that you could clearly follow his line of thought. it was not sort of jumping to and fro. he felt i did out and he sometimes out also, when he discovered that you were doing that, he used it sometimes and against you. so. oh, yeah. and éclat and a clear analysis is of you.

well, of the people who sits opposite to you is always helpful of of info anyway. not that after german unification i had i had i been born after unification in a democratic society i would probably not have studied science. my husband is quite different. he's a natural, natural scientist. he is passionate about it. but i decided to do this simply because under even under socialism, two plus two was four. and you couldn't change gravity of the planet. i mean, it's exists. so you were moving within a remit that was clear that could not be bent where you could actually go in a way all the way to your personal limits. explore where you limits were, and perhaps even go beyond them to also be attentive, to learn more, try to discover more. and in science, i quite often went right up to my limits.

and i like that. i like doing that. so let's fast forward you. you begin to see this ferment. in east germany that people are seeking more freedom. you're seeing in russia, glass glasnost there are movements at the periphery of the russia, the soviet empire around. looking for more freedom and frankly, dissatisfaction with the economic performance in many of these countries. and so you're witnessing all this and then suddenly the berlin wall comes down and you know, i was in law school when that happened, and i still remember this sense that the world had almost overnight been

transformed. and just my eyes glued to the television. as you see these celebrations and these young people climbing on top of the walls. and i remember when, you know, every time you and i worked together in berlin and i could see those lines of demarcation and it's hard to describe for those of you who haven't been to berlin, just it's like if washington, d.c. or new york city, there's just a wall. but between it and you have completely different lives on either side of it. but the proximity and the sense of of how. symbolically. an entire country has been divided is, is almost

unimaginable. suddenly it's gone and reunified. it happens. and and two questions. i guess i have. one is, how did you and you write about this extensively in your book. how do you feel in that moment? excitement, fear of a sense of promise, but also apprehension about what might happen, how do you think about your own identity as somebody who had been born in west germany, lived grown up in east germany, and now suddenly you have a unified sense of german identity. and i guess my last maybe question about this is obviously here in the united states, they're all kinds of divides that we're not dealing with. you write in your book about trying to bring together east germans and west germans to come together and have conversations

about what a unified german identity might look like. what what what did you learn from those moments right after reunification about trying to bridge people's understanding when their life experiences had been so different. yes, but not to disorders. well, they are we we in the gdr made our plans for our lives, and that certainly didn't include that. i would live to see the day when we have german unification. i thought, well, i will have to wait until i'm six years old in the gdr, it was customary for women to retire at the age of 60, and then you were allowed to travel. and i was actually looking forward not only going to west germany, but also to united states of america, because that

was one my big dream. and then all of a sudden, overnight times changed the political environment seemed to change. something was in the air, but when i came home from the academy of science, i had finished my academic work on that very evening of the eighth and all of a sudden a member of the politburo said, yeah, people have to fear to travel. i went to my sauna first because i didn't quite understand what was going on together with my friends and in the sauna that's fighting. and that was an area where a lot of people lived who loved the gdr more than i did. so they were studying since yet not that enthusiastic traveling to west berlin and then i actually went to a pub, had a beer with a friend, and then i saw a big groups of people rushing to the wall. and i lived actually close to the wall. i had to go 20 kilometers to get

to my work along the wall, and i thought, well, i will. i was running with them. i was going across what used to be the wall, and people were completely out of there. i mean, they were so enthusiastic. they were passionate. they were almost out of their minds. west berliners invited us to their homes. it was indescribable, the sort of scenes you saw in the street. and then the morning after we thought, what's going to happen now? i very quickly went to poland. the poland, the poles, because of solidarnosc, some of you may be aware of that were extremely courageous and their bravery to fight against communism, against socialism was something that filled me also always with great admiration. and my my friends there, my polish friends said, can only be a german who now travels to turin and that's it. and we would have stayed in poland. but i said to them, i only came to you because we were always so brave. and they emelia said, you're going to have german

unification, you're going to experience that. and i said, are you sure? and they said to me, yes, next time we come to the germany, of course, but we were sort of against the gdr at the time, but we would never have sort of imagined what we can do once we have this freedom. all of a sudden we had to decide who do you wish to see leading this event? and then in my family, each and everyone voted for something other. i went to the cdu. my mother is a my father to a citizen movement. and all of a sudden we discussed constructively. we were always against, against, against, against any being against is very simple. i mean, in the gdr, you thought your either a nobel prize winner or a year you can win the olympics if the state didn't exist. now the state didn't exist anymore and still you couldn't win the olympics. you couldn't win the nobel prize. you had to work constructively. and that was quite hard work. so it was a very interesting

experience for us and this is why to this very day, my head, my, my, my immediate superior, for example, in the academy of science, became a sort of was part of the citizens movement. and i was the member of the cdu for me, or he went to the to the left wing party. and we were in the time in the gdr we were opponents, but now we were not enemies. we had simply adopted different strands of politics. so i was more tolerant than my west german colleagues vis a vis other members of other parties, because i came from different roots, i came from different a different background. i understood them so the but but i guess part of what i'm wondering for for american audiences also was i guess. yes. something i forgot to to tell you.

i remember there was a third issue that you mentioned the question, how does one now come together? how can you grow together as a society and as a as a country? it took us much longer than we thought. then i we previously anticipated the former west germany was economically a very strong country. so we had that was a stroke of luck because a lot of money papered over the differences and also helped us to to sort of also address the damages because of socialism, because of the communist economic system. but there was such a system was so rundown that a lot of people lost their jobs. those who would have liked to make a contribution to democracy, but because they lost their jobs, it made it very difficult for them to pursue, to participate in agriculture. for example, we lost about 50% of the jobs because it was so inefficient and then 2% are still in agriculture in west

germany working there. and so and that's cannot be papered over simply by injecting money. a lot of people in droves left their home regions in the east and went to west germany to find jobs that many grandparents never saw. their grandchildren grow up. so there's a feeling also in west germany that we didn't really were proper germans. we were a socialist country and the expectation was for us to be happy, which we were but two. and but the fact that we also had an interesting life, a valuable life, was not something that was all that much appreciated by the west. and during my time as a politician, it took me a very long time to address that. i remember one article that was written about me. she who came to the west german cdu with the ballast of an east german biography. so this sort of ballast is

cargo. this pardon. i felt that i felt actually insulted by this because that is something that even when you have the absence of freedom, you can still live a valuable, a good life. and in west germany, so even up until this day, we have not been able to recognize that these two different kinds of life make germany. one is something that needs to be appreciated by both sides. i don't know how it is in the united states, but i know that you these are issues also on the origin, are they not? well, no. look, the. but that's why it was so interesting, because i mean, you have this fascinating social experiment where a society that's unified against divided then comes back together and people have different experiences. there, differences that. inevitably lead to some friction

and some conflict. you know, here in the united states, this historically, the dividing line, the most prominent dividing line has been around race historically. but it's also been regional and what's interesting in the united states now with the changes in the economy, you're seeing a politics that often is divided, not just region, but also between urban and rural communities. urban areas have become tied to the global economy in ways and the knowledge economy in ways that have allowed them to grow faster. but, you know, you have urban or rural communities that have deep history, powerful values. they've helped shape america.

both are part of america, but lately, at least, i think there's been. divisions that can be exploited politically between those two regions, different cultures, different commitments to different values. and sometimes we lose track of what we hold in common. and that's why i think there are some interesting things to learn for us here in the united states. there, if you can be divided literally by a wall for decades and still figure out how to come together and and prosper as one identity and one country, one hopefully the quote unquote, united states of america should be able to do the same. so we've got some work to do on that front.

we do. many of us, which is what is important. and everywhere speech in the united states of america or in germany is to retain a sense of curious city towards people who live a completely different life than we do. and sometimes, unfortunately, the social media seem to actually, well, promote bubbles. you know, people like to be with other people who think like them, but there are human biographies that are interesting, that are completely different from yours and life in east and west. that is exactly what we're talking about. to this contrast between the rural areas and the cities and climate issues, fighting climate change, there's an impression among the rural communities that they are not properly understood that the basis of our lives, of our very existence, is produced in the rural areas. then they the people from the city has put up their windmills

and the country, and then they have their little houses and nice and right next to the farmer's house there is this windmill and a shadowing it. and then the citizens, it's all of the cities attack the rural communities for not accepting that. and the cities are obviously very far. i come from a rural community. i used to have my constituency in a rural area. i love the rural areas and the communities because they feel very much attached to nature and they have this humility with regard to nature, which you can feel much more than in the city, much more than a city person. and i think those of us who live and work in cities, obviously i have a flat and an apartment in berlin too, but we do to retain this interest for other parts of the country. otherwise these rifts will be growing. and then we also have this question. you have this question of racism here in your country, we have a

lot of migrants, a lot of immigration over the last few years. so our societies are facing great challenges, absolutely clear. but still, we need to remain curious with regard to those people who have a different life and have had a different life. i will will allow this to be an arrangement. no, no, look, i think. in the first big speech i gave to a national audience, talked about the united states of america, and that idea. what i really like about what you're saying and this is something i'm talking to younger leaders, whether here in the united states around, the world. i often discuss, but i really like that word you use curious. being able to listen actively and the curious about and learn from the experiences of those who are not exactly like you and

people can tell if you are really listening to them or you just see them as some object and and i think that so much of the challenge that we have now in our politics is how do we get people to feel as if they are genuinely heard, genuinely seeing, genuinely respected. that that when i'm talking to you in a dialog, i'm not just talking to you, but i'm talking with you and that we're learning from each other. and unfortunately, our politics doesn't always, partly because of changes in media, you don't have a common conversation. sometimes we don't have the forum in which to have those conversations. it becomes harder and harder, i

think, for people to feel that they can reach out and be curious about others and. they the experiment that germany, the live experiment that germany went through, i think is a profound one and one that i think we can all learn from. but we have to keep moving because i'm you know, i don't do this all the time, but i know our we don't have any commercial breaks, but i know i'm supposed to keep keep this thing going. so now reunification happens. you're a young woman. your studying quantum chemistry, you've been somewhat active in civil society in the gdr. now you have this massive reunification project and somehow you were able to fairly

rapidly rise in politics that traditionally has been based in west germany. you're also a woman, which means there are always i suspect there will be at least 55% of the audience, we all agree, is always a little more challenging and. and you become about significa kind of. partner and minister within 11 government. the chancellor at the time you become minister of youth and women. give me a sense of of how that felt for you to have been working in a relatively isolated

or at least contained environment. and suddenly now you are out there speaking, hosting meetings and, you know, you are in addition, being analytical and curious. you're very kind and friendly person, but i would say you're not an extrovert necessarily. you know, you're reserved. is that fair? yeah. so. i'm trying to imagine just how. how much of a leap that must have been from in a very few years, suddenly being in the center of german politics during this very exciting. how did you keep your calm, steady perspective in that and that, too? what do you attribute your ability to navigate that

environment. as a woman? well, i must say i ascribe this to my curiosity, because i gladly joined democratic awakening, one of the newly established parties we then joined the christian democratic union, which was already an established party in west germany. and i was enormously interested shaping this whole development and i realized rather quickly that we from the former gdr needed to actually put our foot down, our feet down, because actually people in west germany thought, oh, they're happy about unification and we can simply go on as we are used to. we just have a few more people in our party. but we came from a very different background. so a lot of things also needed be realized by us and needed to be recognize and acknowledged by

us. for example, property rights were completely different. so quite quickly i became the first deputy press, the first deputy spokesman of the then last minister, president of still was the gdr. and then i learned very quickly that these cdu was very much influenced by men. and i was young. i was a woman, and i was from the east. so three different quotas were fulfilled by me and improved greatly by the prestige of the government. very quickly, i became minister for women and youth above i beat, but this was a portfolio which wasn't too big. so i was able to learn and find my feet. and i remember the then ambassador of the united states to germany, mr. holbrooke, came and said he found this totally superfluous, that you had a ministry for women. and i was very brave and said to him, it was most important job

and i thought it was very important. i was i was completely convinced and i'm so i was able to learn in the beginning, it was very strange because i watched the news in west germany. we have the tiger show, which was the big news magazine in the evening. and you saw the cabinet meeting and all of a sudden i sat there at the cabinet table, i was there and it was a breathtaking speed and in order to sort of somehow slow metazoan, i broke my leg after about a year, which was very clear that this was a little bit too much for me. so i in a way, it allowed me to sort of calm down again. the people in my constituency were helping me actually actively. i was trying to sort of get back to base, and i then became minister for the environment and the first climate conference was a chaired by me one and the world opened up to me really,

truly. it was an incredible event at the age of 39 to get to know this plan and to get to know these different characters, different cultures, different histories and different stories of people which fascinated me, has always fascinated me. and then things went on and due to the fact that in the cdu, after helmut kohl had been voted out of office, there was this donation affair. and i was fairly courageous as secretary general of the party. i was then able to become party chairperson and actually had to really also fight my way through. but well, i my i think my gifts are never do anything which you have not fully understood, remain, retain a certain humility. and also, however, be courageous and i was not very modest. i also i was calm, but i was also ambitious. i always thought, well, okay, i

take this step. apparently works, so let's take the next one. and because i really truly enjoyed shaping things, getting to know people and it was a fascinating time at this time around a german unification, a a couple of observation i had and i think part of the reason we worked so well together is that when you said. let me figure out policy and how do you make things better, i always used to say to my staff in the white house, we have both of you and i dealt with very difficult problems and there was never perfect solutions to the problems. but. but i always used to say, well, can we make things better? and i think both you and i have shared practical sense that we're not always going to get 100% of the way there to where

we want to be, but i used to say to my team, better is good. don't, don't, don't. don't be disappointed with better we you take what you can and then you continue to move forward and that pragmatism, i think obviously served you well. but i'm also interested i do want to go back to this issue of of being a relatively young woman surrounded mostly by older men. you know, when you reflect back because you must have thought about this, you're the minister of youth and women initially. how did you come to think about your. approach to leadership as a woman? is it something where you just said, i don't think about it? or is it something that you

said, all right, i'm conscious that that's part of who i am. other people may have assumptions. i will they may occasionally say things or treat me in that they might not treat other people, but here's how i'm going to deal with it. i think about that now, having two daughters and obviously a pretty good role model and their mother, who. but we also often talk about, you know, how do you occupy a space in which you may not be. there may not be a long history of people like you in that space, but you have to win people over and you have to work with them and i think this is a an issue here in the united states in politics, as in other places, parts of the world where you may be part of a group that has historically been oppressed

or unwelcomed or disadvantaged, you're now the first in the room or you helping to break down barriers. you understand that past and that history. and you want to open the door for more people to come through and make it easier for the next generation. but you also recognize, okay, i have to also work with the people who are in front of you. how did you balance that, that potential tension that was. as that as well in the beginning i was relatively naive when i came to the federal republic of germany after unification, i thought, well, this is freedom. there's a constitution. russian human dignity is inviolable. men and women have the same rights. so i thought, well, it's going to be like this in reality. rather quickly, i realized, even as minister for women, that this

wasn't quite the case and that there was something like a glass ceiling where women simply weren't able to penetrate this ceiling. and in western germany on what was then the republic of germany, the idea was that equality of men and women in the gdr was much better because there were so many women gainfully employed. but this wasn't true because power structures, for example, the politburo there was never there was never a woman and always a candidate. female candidate, but she was never elected. somehow to the politburo. so i became then this i mean, that's it's a bit of a chutzpa actually. what do these people that even in the politburo they didn't have enough confidence for a woman to be a member and to vote with them. so. the politic then when i entered politics and was a candidate for the chancellorship, i realized rather quickly that i was a reservation.

people thought, well, a woman be able to do that. there was no experience of women. and so you don't have it either, unfortunately. let's hope for the future of the empire. nothing is done. but yes, but that tiny right at the election in 2005, i really used that before and i made mistakes. obviously my election campaign. but a lot of women, even women voters didn't think a woman can do this. they didn't have confidence in a woman. they thought that's rather well safety first. but then later on, it didn't play such a role. but it was difficult in the beginning. it wasn't that difficult to be chancellor afterwards, even internationally on the international stage, i think i sometimes may have had actually an advantage i was wearing a red blue jacket. i was a bit of a color colorful point among all these gray jackets among women, among men.

so but getting there wasn't that easy so later on? very consciously. very purposefully. i was opting for quotas in our boards of ceos of the big german companies. and there's a long way to go yet until we achieve that. but we did quite a lot in order to have this work life balance for women where they at. i don't have children, but for those women who have children and very often they do the car work, they stay at home, oh, if you don't want to do this, you need somebody to look after the children. and that needs to be affordable and we want to be a qualified obviously and you need to work. and we've done quite a lot during my term of chancellor. now we have more than 72% of women gainfully employed. when we started out, it was only 60. so that's something that

actually makes women in the movement. once they have that, they can also think i can also think about going into politics one question. i would like to ask because we talked about motivation for politics. when did you actually. think for the first time and when did it make click if you like? and you said, i want to be a politician. was it during your studies or later on? it's interesting. i mean, i've written about this and and but i'm not here to sell my book. the. i didn't think about politics at all when i was young. somebody did a biography of me where they said they interviewed my second grade teacher and she said, oh, he said he wanted to be president. i guarantee you that was not true. i mean, i think she just you know, i became president when

she was all like, oh, i remember. yeah, it wasn't something i wasn't raised in the political family and it wasn't a focus of my attention. basically, nothing was a focus of my attention. during high school. i would have basketball and girls and fun. but when i went to that, fun would continue. but i began. my mother had been very interested in development work. she was an anthropologist she worked around poverty issues. she had brainwash me all these years and i didn't realize it. so that i began as i continued, my sister to think about how how do we make societies more just,

how do we make them more equal and. and my inspiration in in those early years was not electoral politics. my inspiration was moving about politics. i was inspired by gandhi. i was inspired by solidarity. and poland. i was inspired by the anc in south africa. and i became active in the anti-apartheid movement on college and most of all, i mean, i think more than anything, i was inspired by the civil rights movement here in the united states. the the history of not just the doctor things, but the. there were just these incredible young people who were there at 23, 25. they're my daughter's age now who were going into really

difficult, dangerous circumstances, freedom riders and people like bob moses and diane nash and and and john lewis, who later became a dear friend of mine and who were challenging and confronting jim crow laws and segregation here in the united states. and that's why i wanted to be more than anybody else. i thought, how can i be part of that? but i graduated 1979, 1980, reagan was president. there was like a huge movement at that time. i had kind of missed that first wave. so that's how i became a community organizer working locally. that was the closest i could find to something approx meeting that. and it really wasn't until i moved to chicago. i was working in communities and

there were there was a mayor there. harold washington, who was the first black mayor in who was very charismatic. there was a huge against him. i was working at the community level, but i noticed that he was able to inspire people through politics in a way that i wasn't able to do at the local level. and i thought, well, maybe someday i might think about something like that, but so my path was a little bit winding for me. trying to bring about change came first and then politics was just one possible means of doing it. but i might have taken a different path had it not been for circumstances, and it turned out i was pretty good at it. but so.

but i so, so, so fast forward, we have about 10 minutes before we start taking some questions so, so your career as chancellor covered so many different issues and so many different moments when you when i was elected and when i first met you. well, you should know, by the way, a quick story i actually first traveled to berlin when i won the nomination. and. we decided i was going to take overseas trip, which was kind of a risk because. usually nominees don't travel overseas. you until you're actually president. but i had to i was running against john mccain. i was young people were questioning my foreign policy credentials. so we said, all right, we're going to take a foreign trip. so we went to iraq and israel

and and and there's an afghanistan and then france. and then we ended trip in berlin. and so we were going to speak and there was some awkwardness in terms of negotiating where i should speak and there were many historical sites in berlin and symbolic sites, and my team negotiated. i had nothing to do with it, but i think i grew up rightly, correctly wanted to be careful not to be seen as favoring one candidate or another. and so some of the sites were verboten. you don't need to translate that. and so angela, i also i think she was quite skeptical because. she thought that i was just a good speaker and was.

i'm telling this story as well. anyway. so the bottom line is we ended up doing this amazing park right in the middle of the heart of berlin about i wasn't sure everybody was going to show up, but 250,000 people came, so it went fine. but after i was elected then, you know, she always she wasn't sure whether i was mad because i had we hadn't got in front of the brandenburg gate, which was fine. i was fine. but you always i mean, five years later, you're kept apologizing and it was fun, right? and then as a a mom, i am. well, well, well, well, maybe i should tell my part of the story and my version, huh? you guys enjoy germany. you're, you know, we're a federal state, so there is the land of berlin and all of a

sudden, i was informed because the chancellor was asked the candidate of the democratic party and barack obama wishes to come to berlin and he wishes to give a speech in front of the brandenburg gate. did i have anything it. that's funny. i was not actually responsible for the federal level, but i said brandenburg gate. i mean, the brandenburg gate for us is something very, very symbolic and very important and he wasn't yet elected. so i thought if you allow this to barack obama tomorrow, the russian presidential candidate will come the day after the vietnamese presidential candidate. and they all want to address the crowd in front of the venue. okay. so i said if you do if i say yes, i create two presidents. i cannot say no. next time i get a huge discussion, nobody understood. my point of view. everyone loved barrack obama. everyone said maca is only saying that because she's not such a good orator as that person. and we always have speeches are

not nice. they don't sound right. you know, she knows exactly that. he will draw a crowd of thousands and with only a few hundred. so i was living to a very difficult period and then they this column of victory was chosen, which is a wonderful place to and and while i was with a beating heart that i met him for the first time because i didn't know was he mad? i mean, he's a potential president of the united states. when we met, but he wasn't mad. we actually went along quite well. and once he became president, he gave a wonderful speech in front of the brandenburg gate. so this is i think these are similar stories. yes. hi. and i really wasn't mad, but she was always worried that i was mad. anyway. but when we first really had a serious discussion working together, it was in the middle of the financial crisis and

really for the first five or six years that we were working together, that was the dominant issue of that. and again, we had some interns in my office the other day and i was they were asking me about politics and dealing with crises. and i started talking about 2008 financial crisis, 2008, 2009 and the i said, yeah, you must have been in middle school. they said, they were all quiet and then they said, no, mr. president, we were three and four, which. yeah, it meant i'm getting old, but i know i want to just point out the degree to which, as the most powerful economy in europe,

germany was critical in stabilizing. the financial system and dealing with the economic fallout and then the great recession that occurred afterwards and and one of the challenges you had, which was a little bit different than me, because i'm the president, united states of america, single currency, but also a long set of traditions and laws in terms of working together and habits. i could make certain decisions. you really had to build consensus oftentimes inside of europe, around how to respond as well has been working beyond the eu to build consensus in venues like the g20. and i'm, i'm interested in how you came to think about what's

known as the european project when it was such under such severe stress and. and what lessons you learned about how to both think about germany and you have to deal with your legislature that despite at the same time as you're also responsible for helping make sure that the eu as a whole was able to weather this storm. it was a a complicated dance that i would often watch you we had a lot of meetings with the sarkozy berlusconi your favorite and they are over the discover and that's it i think in those days something became apparent which also very much determined our cooperation. we were not always of one and the same mind. you were looking at matters from an american vantage point.

you were much more generous as regards certain financial programs and you team, and you probably shook your heads you that she's so thrifty. she is sort of prevaricate ing. she's not putting her foot down and is not sort of spending money to get us out of this and i was extreme really disappointed at the time. i must say i was such a great champion of of market economy. and i came from a socialist, a command economy. i had hoped companies would work responsible. i had to discover that the banks, with their machinations, brought the world to the brink and in the end, the states needed to step in to the situation. and at the apex of this financial crisis was autumn. the fall of 2008. and when you came in 2009, i

knew exactly that barack obama, as a new president, will launch a huge economic program sort of boosting the economy. and when we actually spend everything, we will have to do this in october again. and we cannot simply afford this. so in january, we did something. but even at the time, i was very much concerned will germany be actually able to afford that? there will be countries in europe that will come into difficulties and this is what happened. and out of that emerge, the euro crisis. and from your perspective, obviously, which in principle is shared, greece needs to remain in the euro because if we expel them, this whole project of the common currency will collapse and there's going to be a chain reaction of portugal, italy and so on. on the other hand, you it was not so much your priority, but it was mine that within a common currency union, you also need to have a common competition

standards. if there's one who is not working, who's not working. so efficiently, but the other does. and as in her intention, which is not survivable in the end. so i was constantly asked help greece, help greece, help greece. but nobody said greece needs to make reforms. the international monetary fund i have to say, said it very clearly, very bluntly. but the others didn't want to be tough. and i sometimes had the feeling i had to be the tough guy in the room or the tough person in the room, but still, i had to keep everything together. and what i thought was very good at the time was that our cooperation didn't really break down over these differences of opinion you always tried, even though your people, i think, and not you from the start, were of my opinion or were ready to understand my line of argument which made it difficult for me. so it was a time where i think we, both of us showed tolerance towards one another in order to go down this road. it was not a given that this

would actually come, but in the end it was not always peaceful between us. we were not always sunshine, to put it that way. blue skies, collegial but we had disagreements just to give. we want to give an economic lesson here. but the but but essentially in the financial crisis, you had to stabilize the banks and the financial insurance companies, the big financial systems. and that costs huge amounts of money and was terrible politics because they are the ones who caused it and they acted irresponsibly. and so you wanted to punish them. but the problem is if you just let them collapse, you would get a cascading panic and things would potentially get rapidly worse. enjoyed the pressure, but then you had the economic fallout from that and the that what the united states did have an advantage most european

countries many european countries didn't have which is because where the the dollar is is sort of the world's reserve currency, a we weren't under enormous pressure in terms of of money fleeing from the united states. in fact, during crises, it would come here and a lot of other like greece, ireland, then potentially portugal, italy, spain, they were under enormous pressure from the financial markets. if they didn't get their act together, imposed more austerity measures that they would potentially. seek capital flight. and the risk their financial systems would collapse. and so there was this tension between we needed just

governments to spend money in order to boost demand so that customers and businesses would start having more activity. and we'd get out of this recession. at the same time, you understandably were also concerned with fiscal discipline in order, make sure that countries inside of europe, within the eu could properly balance their books essentially and also one last part of it was that each country has, its own memories and its own traumas and here in the united states, at least up until recently, the main reference point during a big economic crisis since the great depression and there were memories of fdr and the new deal spending money and ultimately world war two spending money to lift us up to boost demand and in germany, a lot of the trauma, the memories are of

hyperinflation, you know, and you know, and so there was greater sensitivity to making sure that you don't deficit spend your way out of problems and so some of it was cultural. some of it was practical issues in terms of our two countries being situated differently. but we never raised our voices. we would just sometimes frown. above the defeats as well. didn't you didn't have to say too much because i knew what you were thinking anyway, the team of the issue, the matter at hand was a different one. the financial markets actually wanted to force us to shoulder a joined as their joint responsibility for all of the member states of the european union in the way that a sort of joint debt and system but we have defending anemic policies

we have different policies in general and we cannot as sort of harmonize them to this extent and actually adopting each other's debts would not have been compatible with our constitution not with our constitutional court. so i did to find a way forward which would save the euro, but would still but would not mean sort of a community ization of our debt. and that was very hard to understand because we're a union, a community, but we're not a state. and this difference, i think, made it difficult for outside us to understand. but in the end, i think at the end of the day, we managed it quite and yeah. and yeah isn't good. we got through it. that's right. so we have roughly 25 minutes left and i promise that we will shift to some questions and i am

going to start we got my cards here. i want to with something that you and i also worked on together and it was a theme throughout our a theme throughout my presidency your chancellorship and is the issue of climate change. you know, both of us i think look at the science we were talking about how we were our scientifically oriented or at least back oriented. and we see the urgency of trying to slow down and ultimately stop this. the emissions of greenhouse gases that are causing planet to heat up with potentially catastrophic. but as you were mentioning, when you talking about rural communities and wind farms, the

the truth is. at no time maybe in human history have, we been asked have we asked humanity jointly to engage in such enormous project as changing the matter of a few decades entirely? how energy is produced and and our people use it and the distribution system, it's it's hugely difficult, hugely complex. you were at the first cop meeting you and i even had another session with colborn in copenhagen where we tried to salvage what was looking like a pretty difficult tension between. countries in the developing world and middle income

countries. countries like china, brazil or south africa whose attitude was we didn't cause this. so it's your problem. you should do everything. but we also had constraints politically and practically speaking, if india and china didn't do anything, no matter what advanced countries did, we were still going to have problems. i'm i'm curious both in terms of results of actually this the question of job, but i just want to give a little context what how how have you seen progress over the last several years are you increasingly pessimistic about the prospect of us changing in to manage this issue? and what advice you give to climate activists who are

increasingly discouraged, young people who are increasingly discouraged about? our failure to maintain our commitments and and take collective action to deal with this crisis. as well. i know that some well, on the one hand, we did make some progress in the development trees and china is doing also certain things in to curb the rise of co2 emissions but and that's something that i'm also writing about in my book we are still too we are still too slow and if we look at the sort of weather phenomena, flooding a very unusual phenomenon of the and the that the biodiversity is destroyed when we look at africa, what happened what's happening? well, we all complain about the flows of migrants we have to say i was going to increase because we're not we're not fast enough.

and i understand that as regards provisions for the future, these young people obviously are desperate because they say they will not live much longer than we do. and this is an i people ask me, what did you do wrong? and must say i was not sufficient early success for in getting majorities for this we have to do something more and to do something against we say we only have to of emissions you in america say we only have 12 but if we as industrial countries are not leading the way, how can we expect of an african country to do that? they say you don't want us to be prosperous. so we have get together as industrial countries and that way are too slow. and if my is that in view of all of these other challenges the war in ukraine and russia trade difficulties that this has been put on the backburner. people are no longer really all

that interested unless something hugely terrible happens and young people i mean, i'm not an active politician these days, but i think we ought to young people need to make pressure on their politicians. we have to take the fear away from people that socially they will not be to sort of survive. they will all need new heating that they cannot afford it. those who actually need our support in order to make this transition need be supported. we in germany have actually so far not done enough this, but it needs to say on the agenda we always have these conference, we say the 1.5 degree. we will have the 1.5 degree. we will not be able to say. but if it's more than two disintegrates, then we have enormous difficulties and enormous cost that will happen. so i can only encourage people not to forget about these enormously different, difficult

and and important subject. okay, we've got a question from dilma. and i'm not going to read the whole question because it's pretty long. but she's interested about the fact that in the context of integration, migration policies, human rights in europe, obviously people have different understandings of how we integrate and bring people together, particularly migrants. you operate that very courageously and in admitting large numbers of, particularly syrian migrants in the wake of the syrian war into germany, there was a political cost to it. it was not always popular. even within your own party.

but you felt as if this was the right thing to do. and i think dullness interest is to what extent was your background as someone who had been in east germany saw the process of migration, even though it's within the context of unification understood people looking for a better life and you know how should we think about this issue of migration? and that obviously is putting enormous pressure on the politics and the demographics of a lot of societies around the world and has obviously helped to shape politics in europe, sometimes in ways that might be contrary to what you would hoped. yeah, yeah. as well.

in 2015, we were simply faced a situation that many, many refugees in particular from syria because of the war came to the european union and basically actually stood in front the german border and so i was well, i had to somehow contend the question, will i have to close the border? will i perhaps and water cannons try to get rid of them or should i perhaps allow them to come? should i allow them some kind of legal procedure to decide who is allowed to stay and, who not? then obviously you will to well, make that decision to, send them back, which was syrian refugee of a civil war. it's not all that easy, but i thought at the time cannot simply give sunday's speeches saying how much we respect human rights, how much we respect dignity. and then all these people come who seek century and we tell them no for you. we don't have room, we don't

have this heart. but i also knew that we cannot take every day or every week ten thousands of refugees. i also knew that there were human traffickers sending these people to europe. so we needed to address this at the root cause and i then tried to forge alliances with others. i also negotiated the eu a and turkey an agreement where with turkey we we made it possible for syrian refugees to live close to their home country in camps that were located in turkey. we gave turkey money to provide for them. and the u.n., such as the world food organization, for example, unhcr who didn't have the necessary funding, were given funding so that people from lebanon or jordan came to us because they didn't see any perspective for their children, for the future. and i think illegal immigration can only be a combated if you talk to the countries of origin and open opportunities for legal

migration. because we all need for example, a skilled labor in in germany. but we can we actually fight together against the criminal networks of of traffickers, whoever things through walls alone. this problem can be solved. well, it's it's a it's a completely wrong assumption, obviously our external borders in the union have also to be protected. but if you are not addressing root cause of this and if we don't address climate change, if this leads in africa to enormous migration flows, we are, after all, only separated in europe through the mediterranean sea, then we cannot deter these people, by bad, but by treating them badly, they will still be able at least to survive, which they be at home. so we need to them to develop that is in our own vested interests. otherwise we have the problems back home. this is my deep conviction. this does not exclude that who

doesn't have a right to asylum can be can be back or i'm going to combine a couple of course. i hope you guys don't mind. one question from nathan one question from china, but it connects to this issue of migration, because i think it's hard to deny that certainly in the united states and in europe, this issue of migration has contributed to a in the far. getting more traction politically the last decade in poland, hungary, but also in germany, the united states, france, italy. what is propelling this movement? how do you think we should address it? and china then adds, obviously

connected. question what advice can you give us to preserve people's commitment to democracy. now in the thirties? well, it's of utmost importance that we see to it to create safety and security for the people who live in our countries. because when people are afraid that they may lose their job, their social security, that person will not be tolerant towards those who come to that country. it's important that we are successful in our integration policies. i think we have well, we have we we tried to provide language. we tried to provide schooling. but our local authorities come well come up to their the limits of they actually can do when the flows are too big. and we also to strengthen

democratic parties and democratic parties have to be seriously addressing the problems that people meet every day we they must not adopt the rhetoric of the right wing parties. if you think that by adopting those rhetorics this rhetoric, you will create further disappoint ment, and that means that parties have different convictions, actually sort of talking about this come into a civilized discourse, show their differences. if you try to up the ante then and this will only strengthen the extreme opposites of the extreme poles. and this is a great challenge that social media have led to a situation where over the world you have the same information available and that people know what's happening and the different parts of our planet. and then home. we have to also in give a

certain security to our people that they feel that they can enjoy a good life, but that they also can open up to other people. and that's a gigantic task. it requires a lot of it requires a lot of cooperation among parties of very different ilk. and we must come to good solutions sometimes will be tough solutions. we must not sort of enjoy and blame games against one another. so i think this leads to a question from richard as a young person who is motivated to create change and get involved in how can my generation combat cynicism and not be played by the general atmosphere in the world? how can we keep fighting against

injustice and prejudice in spite of the obvious? i'm sorry, i've got a question. so please go ahead. as a. the left. i'm sorry. what? what? what. here's here's here's. good rule about democracy is if there's a seat, you know, got of rules that have been set up about other people asking questions, you can't just shout your own question because. it does not that's not fair to the folks who their question in some and we only have 5 minutes left so please if yeah but

here's the thing. i think people people came to listen to people came to listen to angela merkel and not you, young lady. we can you can organize your own event. that's it. you can organize your own event. and people can come to to you and your question. but now they're here to listen to angela merkel. so be respectful. please go ahead. i think it is the fog of ill of the question was an interesting one. let me come back to my own youth when i lived in the gdr at the time you could actually become cynical very quickly because you were not allowed do just say what you wanted. it was much more difficult than anybody democratic society and the state banned so much of your free. i was thinking a lot should i actually stand up for a country that i don't believe is all that

is working all that well is working as i as it should and. this may be something that you perhaps in this country also think right now. should i actually sign up for this country and then i thought, well, i only have one life. you can actually make life hell for yourself if by becoming cynical, by looking on others, by not being happy, by sort of wallowing in this unhappiness, oh, you do something with your life. you try to make the best possible life out of this what you are given and, then you will be able to be light hearted again. so i would encourage those people who feel alone, some who feel disappointed. there are so many people who are happy when you sort of sit with others, talk to them, start a project together because freedom is something rather because then all of a sudden you have to decide yourself. i'm not only free of something, i'm free for something, free to do something good society and my

experience that makes you happy, it makes you happy to do something for others and then you don't get cynical when you're not complaining all the time. i think it's a wonderful piece of advice that when i talk to young people and, you know, the foundation, the work i'm doing, michel, basically training young leaders to get engaged and involved and not feel cynical is part of the message that you just touched on is it's you get engaged and you get involved and you take action big because it actually. transforms you. it's not just that you can transform the world. it also tests you. you have to start thinking about. how do i get things done? how, what? what are my convictions? and and so how do i compromise

and work with people who may not agree with me on everything without giving up my convictions? and then so i test those convictions in the real world by getting things done. how do i express my values? not just by talking or these days axing or tweeting or whatever hashtag, but also by actually working with other people and it also creates relationships between people that if you maintain the curiosity that you describe, helps you grow. because when you work, other people, then even people are the same party or, the same gender or the same race, same interests. they're going to be different than you and if you're curious about, they'll help you

recognize. some of your blindspots and some of new ideas and new that will then help you then have a broader view of humanity and how we can work together. and so the. the best antidote to cynicism as you just described, is do something. it's action with an action with other people people and understand and as you take action that it's not always going to work out exactly the way you intended, and you'll have setbacks and. that's okay. because the learning and the relationships that and the growth that undergo as a young person by taking action and being involved and being engaged over time you will build up impact and that impact will show

itself in the world now the one that fostered. yes and when you do something at least that is my experience. it doesn't start from a theoretical point of view. things look very easy. you do either this or you do that, but even with the easiest things i want to cook, i look at the recipe i want to cook something together with another person. it always turns out a little bit more complicated than previously envisaged. and people also, when you want to help people and, when you support them or when you do sports, all of this kind of experience that you go right up to your own personal limit and realize how quickly you can be sort of tired, how quickly you can reach that limit is interesting and immediately you look differently at other people and their efforts. we all in germany, as you know, love football, that you call soccer. we always look at the coach, we

look at the at the players and just stepping onto the pitch of going outside and jog and do something in sports immediately shows you, oh, it's actually harder than you think. so that is the best recipe against cynicism to say, i, chancellor merkel, my never played football together, so i'm interested seeing you on the pitch. okay. and basketball not basketball either. ever. but this has been a wonderful conversation and i want to i want to i want to close. by asking you a question that i think is, well, i'm going to ask two questions. one of them, once the more personal question and. chancellor merkel does, you know, sometimes is, as i said,

laura's sort of her husband, kim, also a scientist. but a little more fun loving and easygoing. and so so is whether this food aspirations environment. i will never say anything to those contrary to what such a wise person as barack obama has said he is. he and michelle, you know, when you have these events, sort of the leaders go off to their board meetings and then the spouses, if they're attending, they do something interesting. and so he and lot of angela as husband, who's a wonderful man and we call him the professor because he's a professor they had their own little role ship and fun together. what do you these days doing that maybe you didn't get a chance to do as chancellor

you're really enjoying. so that's the personal. and the more serious question. your book is titled freedom. we've been talking a lot about the the passage, the that you traveled from a country that was less free to leaving, a country that was more free, but also seeing the costs and pressures and tensions and different definitions of freedom. why did you call your book freedom? and after all this incredible experience, how do you think about freedom and what's the definition that is meaningful to you? moment that's what let me start with the second question. if i may. freedom is something has always been something that was always looking for in the first part of my life. and this absence of social freedom, of of say, freedom

encouraged me to actually assume responsibility in the second part of my life and i think that some people these seem to think freedom means be free of something i don't have to look into this i don't have to care for that. somebody is going do that for me. my understanding of freedom, i'm i'm a christian. we are all created equal. we are also very different by the lord and we are actually capable of doing something. our free will move something the world can be made a little bit better or perhaps a bit more well. the quality of life can be made a bit better. so my life time is a limited. so let's do the best about it and also guarantee rights. guarantee freedoms of science, of in politics, enjoy that is something that i could do in the second part of my life. but the second 35 years of my

life in what my federal republic of germany. now, i had the freedom to write a book. and i come to this other question. i finally enjoy doing more reading, going out, going to the theater, meeting people and more often than i used to be able to do that, enjoy culture, actually writing the book was hard work. i completely underestimate it that obama together with obama was sort of my chief of staff so to speak. you have to sit down and think matters reflect very hard and it's not easy. but once have that book ready, once you present it and once this is done, would like to talk to young people it about what i write. i mean, i remember i was one of the youngest politicians on the world stage at a time now i'm the old one. and perhaps those people who did

not experience the cold war, the division of germany, well, with them i can exchange views on that because we all live in a certain period. if we forget about history, if you only live in the here and now, we will not understand the future and these long lines in history in this breathless day to day politics is sometimes forgotten. but it's important to talk about this with others, to tell them, what does democracy mean? what is actually democracy, that might be something that be of interest to me. i'd love to do that. and that would be something that i like to do in the future just. one more. merkel we are grateful for the history that you made. you're grateful for the book that you wrote and. thank you for sharing your amazing life, or at least a little bit with this wonderful audience. thank us. give all those wonderful thanks to the audience for.

all right. well, good afternoon welcome