Angela Merkel, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 2005 to 2021, was the first woman to hold the country's most powerful office. Born in Hamburg in 1954 and raised in the GDR, where she studied physics and earned a Ph. D. , she was elected to the German Bundestag in 1990. From 1991 to 1994, she served as Federal Minister for Women and Youth, from 1994 to 1998 as Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety, and from 2000 to 2018 as the leader of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany. She ended her active political career in 2021.
