Angela Merkel’s 70th birthday: These are her little-known sides

Angela Merkel (70) is celebrating a milestone birthday on Wednesday. The CDU politician, who was Chancellor from 2005 to 2021, is turning 70. The physicist with a doctorate, who was the first woman to move into the Chancellery, was born on July 17, 1954 and over time became the “most powerful woman in the world” (“Forbes”).

To mark her special day, she has announced that her autobiography “Freedom” will be published on November 26. In it, Merkel will surely reveal some private anecdotes. She has not spoken too much about her life outside of politics, but some details have leaked out over the years.

Culinary preferences

Merkel is said to have enjoyed eating kebabs during her time in the Chancellery, for example. Without sauce, with meat, lettuce, onions, tomatoes, white and red cabbage, as the manager of a now-closed café once revealed to the “Berliner Zeitung”.

The former Chancellor’s favorite dish is said to be potato soup. In the summer of 2017, Merkel revealed her personal recipe to the magazine “Bunte”. The most important thing is to mash the potatoes with a masher – and not with a blender. “That way, there are always small pieces left in the consistency.” Merkel also once revealed something she doesn’t like at all: Mongolian mare’s milk. She told the children’s news magazine “Dein Spiegel”: “In Mongolia, I was offered mare’s milk. I had a hard time with that.” The reason: “I don’t like drinking milk in Germany either, I probably drank too much of it as a child.”

This is how the Merkel diamond was created

During her time as Chancellor, Merkel’s hands, shaped like a diamond, were considered her trademark. Apparently there wasn’t much behind it at first. At a public appearance, she explained: “It was always the question of where to put the arms. And that’s where it came from. It shows a certain love of symmetry,” joked the physicist.

Angela Merkel and the cherry whisky

In 1994, Tote Hosen singer Campino (62) asked Merkel in an interview with “Spiegel” whether she had ever been really drunk. She replied: “I once fell out of a boat.” She had had too much cherry whiskey at her graduation party. She was 18 years old at the time.

Merkel was a smoker

Angela Merkel was a smoker in the 1990s. She once told “Bunte” years ago: “I smoked a pack of cigarettes every day.” However, she gave up the habit when she had a bad cold. She probably also came into contact with alcohol and cigarettes when she worked as a barmaid during her studies. “That brought in thirty pfennigs for every glass sold,” she told the author Wolfgang Stock (65, “Angela Merkel”) for a biography.

Merkel met these Hollywood stars

One of Merkel’s favorite actors is said to be Robert Redford (87), the star of “Out of Africa,” a film that the former Chancellor is said to have seen several times. The two have already met; in 2017, the actor was a guest at the Chancellery. Merkel has also met with Richard Gere (74), Amal (46) and George Clooney (63), Steven Spielberg (77) and Tom Hanks (68), as well as music star Bono (64).

Merkel’s husbands

The former politician has been married to the professor of physical and theoretical chemistry Joachim Sauer (75) since 1998. Her first marriage was with the Dresden physicist Ulrich Merkel (71) from 1977 to 1982. She kept her name; her maiden name is Angela Dorothea Kasner.

Angela Merkel and Joachim Sauer met in 1984 at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Adlershof. In the magazine “Bunte”, Merkel once spoke briefly about her marriage: She is responsible for breakfast, he usually turns on the washing machine, but: “I am not a housewife. And he is not a househusband.”

Merkel loves gardening and Wagner

In her weekend house in the Uckermark, Merkel apparently enjoys gardening and plants vegetables and strawberries. The former Chancellor is also the sponsor of her own plant. She received this honor in Singapore, where an orchid is named Dendrobium Angela Merkel.

Another of Angela Merkel’s great passions is music: she is considered a huge Wagner fan and regularly visits the Bayreuth Festival with her husband Joachim Sauer. However, she is not planning a visit this year, as the media recently reported. After the end of her chancellorship, she also said in an interview with “Spiegel” journalist Alexander Osang that she now reads thick tomes and devotes herself to audio books.

And she has written her own book. “In her memoirs, written together with her long-time political advisor Beate Baumann, she looks back on her life in two German states – 35 years in the GDR, 35 years in reunified Germany,” said the announcement of Merkel’s memoirs “Freedom”. In November, it will probably provide more insight into Angela Merkel as a person.