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Schroeder’s Rival, and Opposite, Leads in Polls

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Times Staff Writer

Rising in the male-dominated beer-and-BMW politics of Germany, Angela Merkel is known less for eloquent speeches and charisma than for intellectual rigor and an unabashed quest for power that have intrigued this nation for years.

Merkel may make history Sunday, when polls in a tight election campaign predict the 51-year-old conservative will become the country’s first female chancellor.

The daughter of a Lutheran minister, raised in communist East Germany, Merkel is the antithesis of the spin and glamour of modern politics that her opponent Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder navigates so well.

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The reticent leader of the Christian Democrats, Merkel, a physicist, carries an air of determination and integrity that has dogged the gregarious Schroeder in his campaign rallies.

Yet many Germans regard Merkel as aloof and inscrutable, a politician who has managed to remain in the shadows while standing in the spotlight.

“The German public is finding out it doesn’t know the lady very well,” said Matthias Machnig, a consultant who ran Schroeder’s first campaign for chancellor in 1998. “Who is she? What is her foreign policy? What is her economic plan? She’s powerful and willing to win, but is she the leader of a nation? That’s the question.”

Merkel’s ascent is tied less to her personal appeal and political philosophy than to Schroeder’s economic failures and inability to convince ultraliberals in his Social Democratic Party to reform the welfare state. The election this weekend is viewed as a protest vote with a twist of irony: Germans seeking to dump Schroeder for trimming social programs are likely to get a conservative politician intent on deeper cuts.

“People see Merkel as an alternative out of their desperation,” said Gerd Langguth, who wrote a recent biography of the candidate. “She may not be, but that’s how they see her now.”

Personalities count in German politics, but parties win elections. Polls show Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, has slipped in recent days but still has the backing of 40.5% of the public compared with 34.5% for the Social Democrats. Despite many undecided voters, analysts say the gap will be tough to close -- even for Schroeder, who orchestrated a dramatic come-from-behind surge against the conservatives to win reelection in 2002.

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Some politicians suggest the momentum has shifted and that Schroeder may have another upset in him. The chancellor has portrayed the conservatives’ flat-tax proposal as an “inhuman” ploy to help the rich while further hurting the country’s nearly 5 million unemployed.

Many analysts now believe that Merkel’s conservative alliance may no longer win an outright majority in parliament and will be forced into a “grand coalition” with Social Democrats. Under such a scenario, Merkel would become chancellor, but would be forced to temper her economic and social reforms.

The prospect of a Merkel victory arose in May after Schroeder’s party lost control of a key state and he called for early elections to avoid legislative deadlock. The chancellor’s credibility has waned among Germans concerned that globalization and an 11.6% jobless rate are eroding the social ideals that helped resurrect the nation after World War II. Even pride in the nation’s 1990 reunification has diminished as unemployment approaches 30% in many eastern towns.

Merkel seems the perfect antidote. With roots in the east and a political career anchored in the west, she is the rare national politician with potential crossover appeal. Polls suggest, however, that neither side enthusiastically embraces her. Many in the west consider Merkel an interloper. The east wonders why she didn’t join anti-communist dissident movements and whether she has the credentials to improve the economy.

Merkel is married to Joachim Sauer, 56, a chemist, and has no children. She was born in the west German city of Hamburg, but her father, Horst Kasner, moved the family east in 1954 to the farm town of Templin, where he became pastoral director of a seminary. Kasner was intrigued by socialism, friends say, but grew disillusioned as Soviet-style communism gripped Central Europe. His church position kept him under the watch of the secret police, but it also allowed the family access to Western literature and other things forbidden most East Germans.

The pastor’s daughter excelled in academics. Like many of her classmates, she joined the Communist Young Pioneers, which was passage to a respected university. She was guarded with her opinions and uninspired by resistance groups. Biographers and friends say Merkel’s political philosophy was hazy during the Cold War, and they wonder how those years shaped her thinking, if at all.

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“She was not a resistance fighter, yet she was skeptical of socialism; but then she went ahead and joined the Communist youth party,” Langguth said. “She’s not open about her life’s choices.”

He and other analysts say Merkel, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was a scientist with no political ambition until she discovered the power that comes from climbing the ranks of a party.

By her own account, Merkel is guided more by analysis than passion. Asked once by Die Zeit whether she was courageous, Merkel responded: “When it was my turn in school, it took me 45 minutes to jump from a 3-meter diving board. I jumped only in the very last minute when I could already hear the time ringing out. I think that means I am courageous in decisive moments. But I need considerable warm-up time and try to consider many aspects in advance.”

She studied physics at Leipzig University, earned a doctorate in physical chemistry in 1986 and worked with a team of scientists at the Academy of Sciences in East Berlin. As communism was collapsing in 1989, Merkel was hesitant about the growth of grass-roots democratic groups she described as “too dreamy.” She finally joined one, the Democratic Awakening, first installing the party’s computers and then becoming its spokeswoman.

In 1990, she was elected to parliament and introduced to her CDU mentor, Helmut Kohl, the burly, energetic chancellor during Germany’s reunification. Kohl nicknamed Merkel “das Maedchen” -- the girl -- and in 1991 appointed her minister for women and youth affairs. She became environmental minister three years later and had her first showdown with then-governor Schroeder in forcing his state to store nuclear waste. The CDU lost to Schroeder’s coalition in the 1998 national election, and Merkel was named her party’s second-in-command.

“She has a political mind, the necessary toughness, the ambition and the judiciousness,” Wolfgang Schaeuble, then CDU chairman, said of Merkel.

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Those attributes stung Kohl amid a financial scandal in 1999. Kohl had retired as the party’s leader, but his honorary chairman status was threatened when revelations emerged that for years the organization had controlled an illegal slush fund. With party popularity declining, Merkel wrote an open letter to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper urging the party to distance itself from Kohl.

Critics regarded the letter as a political assassination by the leader Kohl had helped create. But the majority of the public viewed it as a rare act of integrity and accountability in politics. The scandal spread and forced Schaeuble’s resignation. In April 2000, Merkel outflanked her rivals and received a standing ovation when she was elected the party’s first chairwoman by 96% of the delegates.

Merkel’s ascent met with sexist attitudes, bringing scrutiny to her fashion sense as well as her politics in a nation where only 7% of top managers in major companies are women. She wears off-the-rack dresses; her hairstyle (blunt bangs) and lipstick (muted) became the stuff of tabloid fascination. The conservative Die Welt called her frumpy and suggested a makeover.

Merkel resisted the image makers, saying she was more concerned with defeating the Social Democrats than matching her handbag to her shoes. These days, however, campaign ads show Merkel in a soft light, her eye shadow complementing her dress and a strand of pearls. But she remains uneasy in the spotlight, agreeing to only one televised debate with Schroeder.

The public murmurs about her new look, but Germans are awaiting more specifics on Merkel’s agenda for the largest economy in Europe. She supports cutting income taxes, raising the value-added tax and strengthening business by instituting labor reforms that include reducing corporate contributions to unemployment insurance. She has yet to articulate plans for overhauling the costly entitlement programs that have bedeviled previous chancellors.

Her foreign policy is likely to bring Berlin closer to Washington. Merkel and the conservatives criticized Schroeder’s confrontational manner toward the U.S. over the Iraq war. But that stance helped Schroeder’s reelection bid in 2002, and Merkel cannot appear to placate the Bush administration while most Germans remain opposed to military involvement in the Middle East, analysts say.

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Merkel’s hometown of Templin seems removed from such debates. In communist times, the town, with its restored market square and red tile roofs, was a state-designated holiday spa. There were saunas and pools; the Friedrich Engels Hotel advertised 1,700 beds and Trabant cars chugged over narrow roads.

“It’d be a good promotion for Templin, but in fact nobody here wants her to become chancellor,” said Templin Mayor Ulrich Schoeneich, noting that Merkel had become too western for the likes of the town and didn’t seem to speak for “ossies,” or easterners. “Everyone’s hoping something will happen in Templin, but nothing will.”

Special correspondent Petra Falkenberg contributed to this report.

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