Angela Merkel: Ex-Chancellor receives Award for memoirs

Angela Merkel (70) will be awarded an honorary prize for her book “Freiheit” published by the market analysis company Media Control at the end of 2024. According to a message, the former Chancellor receives the Gold Award for the first time. The awarding should be solemnly crossed as part of the Media Control Book Night on June 25, 2025 in Baden-Baden.

Merkel will personally receive the price for the “most successful biography of the past ten years” and open the event with a keynote speech. In addition to some guests of honor, 200 students will also be present. The Baden-Württemberg State Youth Orchestra also provides music. Julia Klöckner (52), President of the German Bundestag, was announced as an laudator. However, the price is presented by Media-Control founder Karlheinz Kögel (78).

In a statement, he explains at the special price: “We want to honor the unprecedented success with an award that has not yet existed. Credit individually, covered with real gold – a symbol for the sustainable radiance of this work.”

The over 700 -page autobiography from the Kiepenheuer & Witsch publishing house has been sold almost a million times in Germany, Austria and Switzerland since November 26, 2024. “Freedom” was also able to stay in the “Spiegel” bestseller list for seven weeks. “‘Freedom’ addresses generations, beats bridges between politics, society and life history and has shaped the book year 2024/2025 like no other title,” emphasizes Ulrike Altig, Managing Director of Media Control.

Merkel wrote “freedom” together with her long -time political consultant Beate Baumann (61), who is also to be honored at the award. The two would have “not only written for historians. The claim to tell historical facts around politics in such a way that it also understands a normal person.”

In the announcement of Merkel’s memoir “freedom” it said: “Personally, like never before, she tells of her childhood, youth and her studies in the GDR and the dramatic year 1989, in which the wall fell and her political life began.” Among other things, Angela Merkel herself said about her book: “For me, freedom is not to stop learning not to have to stop, but to continue, even after leaving politics.”