The era of Angela Merkel ends. Helmut Kohl's "Girl" became the most powerful woman in the world

An era ends in Germany. And also in Europe.

Sunday's vote will designate the successor of Angela Merkel, who among the current leaders is the longest-lived leader in the West.

Four terms: more than Konrad Adenauer and as Helmut Kohl, the man who launched her into politics.

Angela Dorothea Merkel was born in Hamburg in 1954, the daughter of a Protestant pastor and a teacher of English and Latin. In the same year the family moved from Hamburg (West Germany) to Brandenburg (East Germany) for work reasons concerning the father, who manages to move with relative ease between the two Germanys.

As a teenager he joined the German Free Youth, a youth organization very popular in the GDR and aimed at training young people on socialist values. Later he becomes one of the members of the Agitprop (Agitation and propaganda) of the FDJ and mainly deals with issues related to culture.

Learn Russian, speak fluent Russian, graduate in physics in Leipzig and do a doctorate in quantum chemistry. It will surprise, but not so much, the way in which graphs in hand will explain over 40 years later - as no political leader has managed to do - the curves of the trend of the Covid pandemic in Germany to motivate the closure measures.

He marries Ulrich Merkel, also a physics student, and moves to Berlin. But in 1982 she divorced, after meeting her future husband in 1998, the quantum chemist Joachim Sauer.

He devotes himself to science but cultivating his political passion, and actively participates in the democratic push that in Germany leads to the fall of the Berlin Wall. He becomes deputy spokesman for Lothar de Maizière, the last president of the GDR Council entrusted with the task of managing a transitional government in view of unification.

Helmut Kohl, the politician of reunification, "adopts" it. Makes her the Minister of Women in the first government of unified Germany, in '94 "The Girl" (as Kohl calls her) becomes Minister for the Environment and Nuclear.

From this last position she builds a political and media reputation that lead her to politically "kill" her mentor. "The girl" in fact, when in 1999 Kohl is overwhelmed by a scandal of black funds, he distances himself and becomes the protagonist of the political "assault" that leads to the fall of Kohl.

Merkel assumes the leadership of the party in 2000, the first woman. In 2005 she won the elections by beating the outgoing Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder: in one fell swoop she became the first Chancellor from the East, the first female Chancellor and the youngest German head of government.

In four mandates he addresses everything: the world financial crisis, that of the euro and that of the Greek debt, the Covid pandemic.

Attacked for being the most ardent supporter of EU austerity, it is she who is fighting so that Greece - albeit with a cure of tears and blood - does not leave the Union, against much of the German public opinion. Few are able to cope with it in Europe: one of these is Mario Draghi, who imposes quantitative easing against his will and that of the Germans.

Hands crossed with thumbs up, gesture symbol of the Chancellor which means empathy. The clothes are always sober and in the most varied pastel colors. His almost boring speech which nevertheless serves to smooth out the corners, to smooth out differences and not to go against the voters of other parties.

It is no coincidence that there was an explosion of the ultra-right in Germany, but to a much lesser extent than in other countries. Perhaps because Angela Merkel is more sovereign than sovereignists. In fact: it manages to maintain the American military shield, at the same time cultivating an energy policy favorable to Moscow (on whose gas it depends) and having excellent trade relations with China, fundamental for Berlin. It manages to find a perfect balance between different geopolitical lines, despite the diplomatic crises unleashed by Vladimir Putin and Beijing in recent years. And she is the leader of the European Union: even when, under the pressure of the Southern States and the crisis caused by the pandemic, the austerity policy ends, it is she who decides the instrument with which to help the States, the Recovery Plan.

A woman who is not afraid to admit mistakes and apologize: she did it on Afghanistan and the climate recently. And he did so even in the middle of the pandemic, he remembers his backtracking on the superlockdown announced for Easter 2021: "It is an error that must be called as such and must be corrected in time, I ask forgiveness from citizens who need certainties", he said announcing the cancellation.

For ten consecutive years, Forbes magazine has considered her "the most powerful woman in the world".

And she, unlike Adenauer and Kohl, leaves standing. The two predecessors as long-lived almost or as long as she, in fact, were forced to leave due to scandals and under the pressure of public opinion. Leave standing, being able to organize the succession and campaign for Armin Laschet. Perhaps he will not win, but it is also physiological that after 16 years the German people decide to change.