German Chancellor Angela Merkel, an unflappable pastor's daughter, is closing in on a third term in Sunday's general election, cementing her title as the world's most powerful woman.

A twice-married childless Protestant raised in East Germany, she has become the unchallenged conservative leader of her generation.

Born Angela Kasner in 1954, she left Hamburg in then West Germany a few weeks after her birth when her Protestant preacher father decided to tend to the flock in the East.

She earned a doctorate in physics, married and divorced fellow student Ulrich Merkel, and stayed out of politics until the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

In 1990 she joined the CDU and won her first parliamentary seat.

Then chancellor Helmut Kohl made her minister for women's issues and later environmental affairs, and bestowed on her the fond but patronizing nickname "the girl". In 2005, she unseated Social Democratic chancellor Gerhard Schroeder after seven years in power, becoming Germany's first female chancellor as well as its youngest.

She is also the only woman to lead a major European power since Margaret Thatcher of Britain.

Forbes magazine has named her the world's most powerful woman for seven out of the last eight years, and she insists despite some friction that hers is the "most successful government since reunification" in 1990.

AFP

(China Daily 09/23/2013 page11)