Page 46 - ACTL_Win23

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JOURNAL
Craig: And it’s true, is it not, that the Stasi tried to recruit her when she was a student at Leipzig University to spy on her associates.
Marton: Yes. But her Lutheran pastor father and her moth- er had prepared her for just such an encounter with the Stasi. She had her lines ready: “I’m a blabbermouth. You cannot trust me with any secrets. I’m going to tell every- body that I’m an informer.”
I too know something about informers. When I was work- ing on my own memoir of my childhood in Hungary and my parents’ trial and imprisonment, I discovered in the Hungarian KGB files – and my family had the dubious honor of having the largest file – that we were under sur- veillance all the time, literally 24/7. The biggest informer in our circle was our nanny, the person who took care of me and my sister. So maybe, like Merkel, I grew up being somewhat skeptical and distrustful.
Craig: Tell us a little bit about how you think growing up under Commu- nism shaped her and influenced her role as Chancellor.
Marton: Let me begin by saying that she was trained as a physicist – and was a very good physicist. Parenthetically, let me say that we need more scientists to seek public service. She always was quietly, extraordinarily ambitious. I quote her saying “I was a good scientist but not Nobel material.” If she wasn’t going to win a Nobel, she wasn’t inter- ested in spending her life doing physics.
Overnight she changed her career. The Wall came down in November 1989, and Merkel joined that great flood of East Germans who poured into West Germany. She was daz- zled by her first encounter with West Berlin – the showpiece of Germany
– and within days, she began looking for ways in her neighborhood in East Berlin to join a political startup.
After half a century without freedom – first the Nazis and then the East
German Communist Party – polit- ical parties in East Berlin popped up like mushrooms after rain. She walked into the office of a new small
party in East Berlin. All the men were sitting around a table. She noticed that there were a bunch of unpacked boxes in a corner; gifts of computers from some American donor. None of the guys sitting around that table knew how to assemble a computer or even plug it in. So quietly, in her Merkel mode and being tech savvy, she rolls up her sleeves, unpacks the boxes and assembles the computers. After that, they asked her to sit at the table.
One thing we don’t often ascribe to women politicians is being canny and ruthless. Merkel was absolutely unsen- timental when it came to her career. She always kept in mind the greater good but slowly, quietly and ruthlessly she pursued her ambition. She ultimately chose the con- servative Christian Democrats as her home base, and her country was always preeminent in her interests.
But as you know, she guillotined her mentor, Helmut Kohl, when the moment came. I don’t mean that literally.