Updated: September 22, 2013 – Angela Merkel becomes the Chancellor of Germany for her third term.
View Merkel’s color caricature painted for this occasion.
Click to view Angela Merkel’s Color Caricature
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Read the other two parts of this story at the following links:
- Eurozone Debt Crisis – Part 1 of 3 – Explaining the Crisis and Paving way for the new Tsars of Europe – Sarkozy and Merkel!
- Eurozone Debt Crisis – Part 2 of 3 – Caricature/Cartoon of Nicolas Sarkozy as Caesar
Now presenting the fourth most powerful person in the world today – Ms. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany… with the ropes that bind her.
Angela Merkel and the Eurozone Crisis
Angela Merkel has been criticized for dragging her feet on the Eurozone Debt Crisis Issue. She’s been asking for the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) to curtail their expenditure and take other fiscal measures (that were criticized as draconian by many – as they’d put more pressure on the economies of these already weak economies.) She was also against the issue of the Common Bonds by ECB, perhaps because Germany being the strongest economy in the Eurozone would suffer the most by supporting the ECBs.
Recently, the French President Nicolas Sarkozy managed to convince her (and as Sarkozy and Merkel have been working closely on this issue, the paparazzi is affectionately calling the pair, Merkozy,) that the two have to lead the Euro and the Eurozone out of this crisis.
Angela Merkel’s Shortest Bio on the Web
Angela was born in a pastor’s family in Hamburg, on July 17, 1954. She studied Physics, earned a Ph.D. in Quantum Chemistry, and then worked as a Chemist (wow! And I thought that politics and scientific aptitude could never coexist. I mean how could you be diplomatic yet objective. Imagine a scientist saying “We are deliberating over the boiling point of water and if more than half the parliamentarian say that it’s 50 degrees centigrade, it shall be “constitutional-ized” as 50 degrees.)
In 1990 (after the Berlin Wall fell), she discovered her true calling and she joined the Christian Democratic Union (which is a political party and not a religious one,) and was elected to the Bundestag, thus she became the Minister for Women and Youth (what’s the difference – I mean, between women and youth…oh…oh. I get it. All women are young, but not all youth are women!) Then Helmut Kohl the then Chancellor of Germany lost (Merkel may have had some hand in his defeat, as she criticized Kohl and said that she favored a party sans Kohl,) in the 1998 elections and she became the Sec-Gen of CDU. Though she was made the party leader in 2000, but in the 2002 elections she couldn’t become the chancellor. Eventually, in 2005 she achieved her dream and became the first female chancellor of Germany. However, her popularity grew in the coming years, and in 2009 she was re-elected with an overwhelming majority.
Merkel’s Standpoint on Multiculturalism
In October 2010, Merkel said that the Germans are attached to the Christian concept of mankind and that it defines the Germans. She also said that the immigrants should either integrate with Germany’s culture and values or leave.
Angela Merkel’s Love-Life
(You know that your favorite caricaturist is ridiculously romantic!)
It’s clear to me (it could well be make-believe too – because I can hardly see anything that’s more than a few feet away from me,) that Angela Merkel’s first love is Germany. Next in line, asking for her love and finding it perhaps is the crystal clear logic of science. It’s only after having talked about these two loves that one must speak of her first husband Ulrich Merkel or her second husband Professor Joachim Sauer, who is a quantum chemist and if we are to believe the web-rumor-mill, who may get a Nobel prize for his work. Merkel’s got no children.
(I see about 90% of the women of this world screeching, “whaaat? no kids? what’s wrong with her? That poor mite. She’s not experienced the greatest of all joys that a woman can ever experience…” And I also see Merkel shaking her head in disbelief and saying – “Hey, I’ve known a few other joys – for instance, the joy of success, the joy of knowledge, the joy of power…” but then, even she’d lose her chancellor-ship in the next elections, if she dared to voice such an opinion – but then this entire thing that I’ve written here is fiction – isn’t it?)
Some Special Merkel-Bytes:
- She was in “The World’s 100 Most Powerful women” in 2006, 7, 8, 9, and 11!
- Believe it or not, she was even given the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for the year by the Indian Government.
- She’s been called the Iron Lady, Iron Girl, Iron Frau…and has been compared to Margaret Thatcher.
- She was personally present at the M100 Media Award handover to Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist who was criticized for making a cartoon that inflamed the Islamist sensibilities. She’s been praised for this brave move to support freedom of speech.
- However, Merkel has also supported the introduction of islamic education in classroom.
Read the other two parts of this story at the following links:
Shafali's Caricatures, Portraits, and Cartoons 