Angela Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner on July 17, 1954, in Hamburg, which was then part of West Germany. Her father, Horst Kasner, was a Lutheran pastor, and her mother was a teacher of ...

I first encountered Angela Merkel when I was the Eastern European ... was the result of a strict academic upbringing. Her father was a clergyman in the East German provinces and Merkel was a ...