The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel

“To this austere, demanding man of God, Angela would never be as important as his faith or his flock. Though she accepted this fact, his oldest daughter was understandably left longing for a more present, more approving father […] The connection between her never fully realized desire for her father’s approval and her intense drive for achievement is clear. But perhaps none of Horst Kasner’s actions was more influential on Angela’s early development than his decision to leave West Germany’s relative security to face the dangers and volatility of the Soviet-occupied East.”

The quote illustrates the profound impact Horst Kasner’s unyielding devotion to his faith had on Angela Merkel. The dynamic between her father’s perpetually- elusive approval and Merkel’s perpetual pursuit of achievement is one of Marton’s central themes in the book. Additionally, Kasner’s choice to relocate to the volatile Soviet-occupied East, despite the risks, is a defining moment in Angela’s formative years, establishing The Influence of Merkel’s East German Background.

“To achieve her goal of service, Merkel recognized early that she would need power, which she never saw as a dirty word. As she explained it: ‘Power per se is nothing bad. It is necessary. Power is ‘to make’—to do something. If I want to do something, I need the right tools; that is, the support of a group…The opposite of power is powerlessness. What’s the use of a good idea if I can’t execute it?’ To hear a politician, man or woman, express such an explicit perspective on power—and her need for it—is, to say the least, unusual.”

Merkel’s pragmatic and unapologetic view of power illustrates her strategic mindset, as she recognizes power as an essential tool for achieving her goals rather than something inherently corrupt. By framing power as a means to enact ideas and effect change, she challenges the conventional negative connotations of political ambition, especially the often-negative view of female-wielded power within patriarchal contexts—an important aspect of Angela Merkel and Feminism in the book.

“Merkel never publicly criticized her father’s politics. ‘My father tried to shape a church that met the needs of the people in the East,’ she said, likening his beliefs to those of liberation theologians in Latin America. Her public loyalty did not mean Angela agreed with him in private, however […] Years later, the pastor would say that his daughter was lost to him early on, commenting somewhat bitterly, ‘She always does what she wants.’”

Merkel’s diplomatic approach to handling disagreements with her father— i.e., choosing to maintain public loyalty while potentially differing in private—serves as an early example of The Nature of Merkel’s Nonconfrontational Style. Merkel also pursued her own path despite her father’s disapproval, which speaks to her action-oriented feminism.