{"id":9431,"date":"2017-11-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-26T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aspeninstitutece.softmedia.cz\/article\/2017\/merkels-mean-girls\/"},"modified":"2024-09-30T18:49:33","modified_gmt":"2024-09-30T16:49:33","slug":"merkels-mean-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/article\/2017\/merkels-mean-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Merkel\u2019s Mean Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"

Angela Merkel has built her career around female advisors and undermined the old boys\u2019 network in the process.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Having won her fourth consecutive election victory\u2014albeit with a reduced number of votes\u2014Merkel is set to govern Europe\u2019s largest economy for another term. How has this most unlikely of political leaders succeeded in transforming the once male dominated conservative and Christian CDU (Christian Democratic Union) into a centrist party? Answer: Largely in close co-operation with a close-knit group of predominately female advisors.<\/p>\n

German Media have talked about \u201cGirls Camp\u201d when describing the cabal surrounding Merkel. In some ways such reporting is always in danger of generating sensationalist hype without substance. Merkel is no traditional feminist. And yet, it is undeniable that Die Kanzlerin, as Merkel is called, relies\u00a0more heavily on female advisors than even many other women politicians.<\/p>\n

Merkel \u0301s Girls Look after Her<\/h2>\n

Since long before coming to power in 2005, Merkel\u2014who is 63\u2014has relied\u00a0on Beate Baumann. The 54-year-old Cambridge graduate has been Merkel\u2019s Chief of Staff since 1995, the year she became Secretary of State for the Environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cI need someone who can look after me,\u201d Merkel reportedly said. Her then staff of mostly male civil servants treated the new minister with ill-disguised condescension. Merkel\u2019s colleague Christian Wulff\u2014who later\u00a0became president of Germany (2010-2012)\u2014recommended Baumann. This was the beginning of the strongest partnership in modern German history.<\/p>\n

Baumann, who has never given interviews, is Merkel\u2019s equal. Thus, when Merkel was reeling under pressure at one of her first international\u00a0conferences, and seemed ready to shed a tear, Frau Baumann took her to task and applied her trademark tough love approach to her boss: \u201cGet your act together woman,\u201d Baumann hissed. Merkel did as she was told. Yet, the two keep a professional distance, and address each other as using the formal Sie rather than the informal Du (you). Like Merkel, Baumann has no children.<\/p>\n

Baumann is not the only \u201cwoman behind the woman.\u201d Since 2002, Merkel has relied on the advice of Eva Christiansen. The 47-year-old economist and mother of one has been Merkel\u2019s main speechwriter, spin doctor, and problem solver. The youthful-looking blonde is often credited with inventing the \u201cMerkel Sound,\u201d the slightly mumbling and non-threatening\u00a0style of talking that characterize the German chancellor.<\/p>\n

Merkel is no traditional feminist. And yet, it is undeniable that Die Kanzlerin, as Merkel is called, relies\u00a0more heavily on female advisors than even many other women politicians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Baumann and Christiansen belong to the innermost circle of the Kanzleramt (the Chancellery), there are other powerful women around Merkel. Defense Minister and mother-of-seven (!) Ursula von der Leyen (front-runner to be Merkel\u2019s successor) and the CDU Party\u2019s vice-president Julia Kl\u00f6ckner (a former beauty queen who is rumored to be Merkel\u2019s preferred crown princess) are among the most influential politicians in Germany.<\/p>\n

Of course, Merkel also takes advice from male advisors, her foreign policy advisor, the diplomat Christoph Heusgen, and her economic advisor, Professor Lars-Hendrik R\u00f6ller, provide technical advice and expertise in difficult negotiations but they do not belong to the innermost circle of Merkel\u2019s trusted confidants.<\/p>\n

The Demise of the Altar Boys<\/h2>\n

\u201cNah, she can\u2019t do it,\u201d was the late Helmut Kohl\u2019s dismissive remark when he heard that Angela Merkel wanted to become party leader and hence candidate for the chancellorship in 2000. A few weeks before, the woman whom the former Bundeskanzler<\/em> called mein M\u00e4dchen<\/em> (my girl) had undercut him and his successor Wolfgang Sch\u00e4uble by writing an op-ed in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung<\/em>, in which she distanced herself from Kohl and criticized her former mentor for having received illegal party donations.<\/p>\n

Back then, the CDU was ruled mainly by white Catholic males from the southwest of Germany. For Kohl it was a natural state of affairs that the next leader would be found among one of the younger conservative Catholics. The names Friedrich Merz, Roland Koch, and J\u00fcrgen R\u00fcttgers are unknown to most non-German readers. These old-fashioned conservatives were prominent members of what was known as the Altar Boy Generation [Generation Messdiener] and felt leading the CDU was their birthright.<\/p>\n

The CDU was ruled mainly by white Catholic males from the southwest of Germany. For Kohl it was a natural state of affairs that the next leader would be found among one of the younger conservative Catholics.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These politicians held traditional view of women\u2019s role as Kinder, K\u00fcche, Kirche<\/em> [church, kitchen, and children] – roughly the equivalent of English \u201cbarefoot and pregnant.\u201d In addition to these views, the Altar Boys were highly\u00a0skeptical of immigration and were defenders of the superiority of German Leit-kultur<\/em>. R\u00fcttgers infamously summed up his preferred policy as \u201cmore children and fewer Indians,\u201d or Kinder statt Inder, as the slogan runs in German.<\/p>\n

These men were already successfully running some of the largest of Germany\u2019s sixteen states and everybody expected them to take over after Helmut Kohl. Back then, no woman had held more than a symbolic post. Indeed, Merkel herself was regarded as a token female when she became minister for children and women in 1990.<\/p>\n

The Direct Effect on Public Policies<\/h2>\n

The rise to power of Angela Merkel, a Protestant female from the east of Germany, not only spelled the demise of Die Messdiener. One by one (and with a substantial amount of Machiavellian touch), Merkel and her advisors outmaneuvered the Catholic old-boys network using means reminiscent of the movie Mean Girls. While outwardly supportive and friendly, Merkel, Christiansen, and Baumann were able to use charm and contacts in the media to run stories that undermined the credibility of the self-appointed custodians of Catholicism.<\/p>\n

One by one, Merkel and her advisors outmaneuvered the Catholic old-boys network using means reminiscent of the movie Mean Girls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The prominent position of women in Merkel\u2019s inner circle has a direct effect on a number of public policies, such as measures to help female-run\u00a0start-ups, targets to get more female members of a company, free daycare places for children over 12 months. However, the main effect has not been reflected in concrete policies but in a greater place for women in German public life. This was unheard of before Merkel became Chancellor.<\/p>\n

Having given Merkel another four years at the helm, German girl-power is set to continue. It is part of Merkel\u2019s style of governing to prepare meticulously; to understand how her opponents think. When preparing for her first meeting with Donald Trump she told her staff: \u201cI\u2019ve been reading Playboy Magazine lately \u2013 to understand Donald Trump.\u201d What that says about Merkel\u2014and about Trump\u2014is for the readers to decide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Angela Merkel has built her career around female advisors and undermined the old boys\u2019 network in the process. Having won her fourth consecutive election victory\u2014albeit with a reduced number of votes\u2014Merkel is set to govern Europe\u2019s largest economy for another term. How has this most unlikely of political leaders succeeded in transforming the once male […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7154,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[102,103,114,225,248],"class_list":["post-9431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nezarazene","tag-comment","tag-cover-story","tag-germany","tag-merkel","tag-women"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10477,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9431\/revisions\/10477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitutece.org\/cs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}