It is in an idyllic spot. Surrounded by lakes and forests, the town of Templin is popular in summer with tourists who wander among its sandy paths and pine trees, or go fishing in its reed-filled canals.
It was here in rustic communist East Germany that the woman who is likely to become Germany’s next leader grew up.
On Monday Germany’s conservative opposition formally confirmed Angela Merkel as its challenger to Gerhard Schröder, the country’s embattled Social Democratic chancellor, who last week called a general election.
If the polls are correct, Merkel, who is often compared to Lady Thatcher, will in September become Germany’s first woman chancellor, and the first to have grown up in the former communist east.
Merkel on Monday told a meeting of ecstatic supporters at the Berlin headquarters of her Christian Democratic (CDU) party that she was ready ”to serve Germany”.
But in her home town they have mixed feelings.
”We are very pleased that she is from Templin,” said the town’s mayor Ulrich Schoeneich. ”But nobody here wants her to be chancellor. It would be good for us, but I’m not sure it would be good for Germany.”
Schoeneich’s ambivalence stems partly from a conviction in Templin that Merkel, who is far ahead in the polls, is unlikely to transform the town’s dismal economic prospects. Despite its pastoral surroundings, unemployment here is 30%. Silver City, its Wild West cowboy theme park, closed last year after one season.
Templin, with a population of 17 700, may have pretty cobbled streets and nature reserves — ”but we don’t have any jobs,” says the mayor. ”All our young people are leaving.”
The eldest of three children, the future party leader, born Angela Kasner, grew up in the Waldhof, a large wooded estate at the edge of town where her father ran a seminary.
In her teens she joined the Free German Youth, the communist youth organisation, and took her Jugendweihe, a secular confirmation ceremony organised by the state.
At Leipzig University, where she studied physics, she became the Free German Youth’s cultural official. There is no suggestion that she was ever a serious communist, but, like most East Germans, she offered no opposition to the communist regime either.
”She was a fellow traveller,” said Schoeneich, who was until recently a Social Democrat. ”This gave her personal advantages.
”I don’t condemn her for this. Ninety-five per cent of East Germans did the same thing.”
But he added: ”I didn’t join the Free German Youth. As a result I wasn’t allowed to study or go to university.”
Merkel’s nomination on Monday as Schröder’s challenger crowns an astonishing rise to the top.
Her career in politics only began in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell. Merkel left her job at Berlin’s science institute to work as a spokesperson for a new East German political party, Democratic Awakening.
In 1990 she joined the Christian Democrats. The chancellor, Helmut Kohl, promoted her a year later, first to minister for women and youth, and then to environment minister, leading the German media to nickname her Kohl’s girl.
She was, however, tough-minded, independent, and ruthless. When Kohl was embroiled in a party funding scandal after his 1998 general election defeat, Merkel criticised her former mentor.
She further stunned her critics by calling for a generational change inside the CDU’s ranks.
But it happened, with Wolfgang Schäuble and other senior leaders implicated in the scandal falling away almost overnight.
She became party leader in 2000, only to stand aside when the conservative opposition nominated her rival Edmund Stoiber (the leader of the CDU’s Bavarian sister party the CSU) to stand against Schröder in the 2002 election.
Stoiber lost. Merkel seems unlikely to make the same mistake.
On Monday she signalled that her priority would be to tackle unemployment, which is currently running at almost five million.
Her austere avowal on Monday that she wanted to serve Germany also sent a signal to Germans that there were tough times ahead, according to her biographer Wolfgang Stock.
”This is an unusual thing for a German politician to say,” Stock said. ”It’s old-fashioned. It’s almost Prussian. She’s saying, ‘There are difficult times before us, and I don’t expect to have much fun.’ ”
How radical Merkel will be in government, and what her real beliefs are, remain unknown.
”She was always very inconspicuous,” said Gottfried Kerner, who grew up in the Waldhof with Angela Kasner and went to the same school. ”She was very ordinary. But it was also clear that she was deeply ambitious.”
Merkel’s parents, Horst and Herlind Kasner, do not appear to share their daughter’s beliefs.
Immediately after German reunification, Kasner joined the SPD and became a district councillor; Merkel’s younger brother Marcus is a Green. Mr and Mrs Kasner still live in Templin, and she teaches English there.
Merkel has a weekend house in the Uckermark, the vast area of forest and lakes around Templin used since medieval times for log-cutting.
It is here, just north of Berlin, where she sometimes escapes with her second husband, a chemistry professor.
She still uses her first husband’s surname — they divorced after less than five years — and has no children.
In the town of Templin itself, many locals appear to believe that Germany’s problems have become so intractable that Ms Merkel cannot solve them.
”If she becomes chancellor, things round here won’t change,” said one, Mike Preuszner. ”There’s no industry here. In fact there isn’t anything. She can’t do it.”
The formula for success
- 1954 Born Angela Dorothea Kasner in Hamburg
- 1957 Moves to East Germany, where her father had taken a post as a Protestant minister
- 1977 Marries Ulrich Merkel. The couple divorce in 1982
- 1978 After studying physics at the University of Leipzig, becomes a quantum chemistry researcher at the Academy of Science in East Berlin
- 1989 Joins Democratic Renewal, a pro-democracy group
- 1990 Serves as spokesperson for East Germany’s first and only democratically elected leader, Lothar de Maiziere. Joins the conservative Christian Democrats. Elected to reunified German parliament in December
- 1991 Named minister for women and youth in Helmut Kohl’s Cabinet; elected deputy chairperson of Christian Democrats
- 1994 Becomes environment minister after Kohl’s re-election
- 1998 Elected general secretary of Christian Democrats in November after party loses power; marries chemistry professor Joachim Sauer
- 2000 Elected chairperson of Christian Democrats amid fallout from a slush fund scandal surrounding regime
- 2002 Steps aside to allow Bavarian governor Edmund Stoiber to lead unsuccessful election challenge to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Boosts grip on party after his defeat, taking over its leadership in Parliament
- 2005 Nominated to challenge Schröder in an early general election. – Guardian Unlimited Â