My question to Angela Merkel

Follow Emilia in Angela Merkel's footsteps. Discover the series tone and agenda as well as famous guests who will give exclusive insights about the most powerful European woman of this early 21st Century.

In this episode, Emilia starts her quest for the perfect question to ask Angela Merkel by looking into her origins. We find out about her life as the daughter of a protestant pastor on an evangelical mission in East Germany. We learn all about her brilliant track record as a student, about her nerd side, about the time she defied the DDR authorities by reading a censored poem. We understand together how she could be seen both as a Western girl in East Germany and as “the Easterner” from the perspective of Western Germans.The guests featured in this episode are:Joyce Mushaben, political scientist, former Professor at Georgetown University and author of “Becoming Madam Chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Berlin Republic”.Rainer Eppelmann, politician, former DDR Minister and CDU member.

After having delved into her origins in the previous episode, Emilia moves on to investigate what Angela was up to in her late 20s and her early 30s. We find out how Miss Angela Kasner became Mrs Angela Merkel and how she cleverly managed to avoid working for the Stasi. We discover where she was when the Berlin Wall was being torn down and what she did after such an event so pivotal in Germany’s history.The guests featured in this episode are:Joyce Mushaben, political scientist, former Professor at Georgetown University and author of “Becoming Madam Chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Berlin Republic”.Michael Schindhelm, filmmaker, curator and former colleague of Angela Merkel at a laboratory in East Germany.Rainer Eppelmann, politician, former DDR Minister and CDU member.

In the previous episodes Emilia has told us all about Angela Merkel’s youth. It is now time to discover her complex relationship with feminism and to learn about her first years as a woman Minister operating in a man’s world. We find out how she made her voice heard on the legislation on abortion and how she turned a ski accident into an occasion to fill the gaps in her knowledge on women’s rights in Western Germany. The guests featured in this episode are:●     Michèle Alliot Marie, former Minister of Defense, Minister of Justice, and Minister of International affairs of France.●     Joyce Mushaben, political scientist, former Professor at Georgetown University and author of “Becoming Madam Chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Berlin Republic”.●     Florence Autret, journalist and author of “Angela Merkel. Une Allemande (presque) comme les autres”.

With Angela Merkel’s youth and the beginning of her political career already covered, Emilia will move on to tell us about Helmut Kohl opening many doors for Merkel both within the government and within the party. Then, after having delved into the so-called “CDU donations scandal”, Emilia will tell us how Merkel managed to save the whole party from sinking and how she showed no mercy to her political competitors. We’ll find out how she took a European stance for the first time before even becoming Chancellor and how she managed to influence the choice of the President of the European Commission who would succeed Romano Prodi without even being at the negotiating table. The guests featured in this episode are:●     Jacqueline Boseyn, journalist, speechwriter and author of “Angela Merkel. Eine Karriere”.●     Michael Schindhelm, filmmaker, curator and former colleague of Angela Merkel at a laboratory in East Germany.●     Florence Autret, journalist and author of “Angela Merkel. Une Allemande (presque) comme les autres”.

Emilia already told us all about Merkel’s youth and retraced every step of her political career up until the role she played in closing the deal on the Lisbon Treaty. But as we will discover in this episode, that was only one of the many challenges Merkel had to face ever since becoming Chancellor. Emilia will tell us about Merkel turning to books herself in the face of the financial crisis, about her disagreements with Sarkozy on what to do about the most fragile EU economies, and about her taking so long to decide how to address the financial crash that even Jean Claude Juncker ended up bothered by it.The guests featured in this episode are:Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019, previously President of the Eurogroup and Luxembourg’s longest serving Prime Minister.Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece from 2015 to 2019 and leader of the Official Opposition since then.Florence Autret, journalist and author of “Angela Merkel. Une Allemande (presque) comme les autres”.

By now we know all about Merkel’s life and political career up until how she reacted to the financial crash of 2008. In this episode, we will discover about the time the EU was on the verge of a new crisis because of Greece’s instability. Emilia will tell us about Merkel holding back even though European leaders only had 72 hours to prevent it, about her stating that “Germany can’t do well if Europe doesn’t”, about her key alliance with Sarkozy in Brussels against the likes of Papandreou and Berlusconi.The guests featured in this episode are:Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019, previously President of the Eurogroup and Luxembourg’s longest serving Prime Minister.Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece from 2015 to 2019 and leader of the Official Opposition since then.François Hollande, President of France from 2012 to 2017, previously First Secretary of the Socialist Party.Judy Dempsey, journalist and senior fellow at Carnegie Europe.Florence Autret, journalist and author of “Angela Merkel. Une Allemande (presque) comme les autres”.

Emilia has already delved into every detail of Merkel’s life and political career up until her reaction to the Greek sovereign debt crisis. As we will discover in this episode, before she could catch her breath, Merkel was faced with yet another challenge, one that would make her enter history: a consistent surge in migratory flows. Emilia will tell us about Merkel being in favour of a common European asylum system and about her making sure that no more walls prevented freedom of movement. We will discover all about her famous words “Wir Schaffen das” and understand whether the far right anti-EU party AfD got more popular just because of Merkel’s choices.The guests featured in this episode are:Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission from 2014 to 2019, previously President of the Eurogroup and Luxembourg’s longest serving Prime Minister.Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece from 2015 to 2019 and leader of the Official Opposition since then.Florence Autret, journalist and author of Angela Merkel. Une Allemande (presque) comme les autres”.Joyce Mushaben, political scientist, former Professor at Georgetown University and author of “Becoming Madam Chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Berlin Republic”.