BERLIN - A Protestant pastor's daughter who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, Angela Merkel rose to become the "chancellor of Europe" who has outlasted a generation of world leaders. During that momentous upheaval, the 35-year-old Merkel was working in a Berlin laboratory but quickly joined the nascent group Democratic Awakening. - 'Free world' leader -In a party dominated by southern Catholic men, the twice-married, childless woman from the communist East was and remains an outsider. Especially in southern Europe, Merkel has drawn open hatred as a puritanical "austerity queen" sometimes caricatured in Nazi garb. Oxford University's Timothy Garton Ash wrote that "I'm tempted to say that the leader of the free world is now Angela Merkel".

Source: Bangkok Post November 20, 2016 10:41 UTC