Freedom: Memories 1954 – 2021

The long-awaited memoir by one of the most important political leaders of our time

For 16 years, Angela Merkel bore the governmental responsibility for Germany, leading the country through numerous crises and shaping German and international politics and society with her actions and attitude. But Angela Merkel was not born a Chancellor. In her memoirs, co-written with her long-standing political advisor Beate Baumann, she looks back on her life in two German states – 35 years in the GDR (German Democratic Republic), 35 years in reunified Germany. More personally than ever before, she talks about her childhood, youth, and her studies in the GDR, and the dramatic year of 1989, when the Wall fell and her political life began. She shares insights into her meetings and conversations with the world's most powerful leaders and elucidates, with clear and precise examples, significant national, European, and international turning points and how decisions were made that shape our times. Her book offers a unique insight into the inner workings of power – and is a decisive plea for freedom.

“What does freedom mean to me? This question has occupied me my entire life. Naturally, politically, because freedom needs democratic conditions, without democracy there is no freedom, no rule of law, no protection of human rights. But this question also occupies me on another level. Freedom, for me, is finding out where my own limits are, and pushing my own limits. Freedom is for me not to stop learning, not to have to stand still but to be allowed to continue, even after leaving politics.” - Angela Merkel

About the Author

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.