podcast
“ÜberMerkel” – Episode 6
“Friedrich Merz only had a smile for it” – comrade-in-arms Hannelore Rönsch on the rise of Angela Merkel
In the early 1990s they formed Bonn’s “House of Three Girls”: Hannelore Rönsch (CDU, left) was responsible for the family department, Gerda Hasselfeldt (middle, CSU) was Federal Minister of Health and Angela Merkel (CDU) was Minister for Family and Youth.
© Rainer Unkel / Imago Images
After the federal elections in 1990, Chancellor Helmut Kohl brought Angela Merkel into his cabinet and split up the Federal Ministry for Youth, Family, Women and Health. The “Three Girls’ House” is created – in which, in addition to Merkel, there is also space for the CSU politician Gerda Hasselfeldt and CDU woman Hannelore Rönsch. You are a guest in the sixth episode of “ÜberMerkel”.
It is the first all-German federal election and a confirmation for the “Chancellor of Unity”. On December 2, Helmut Kohl won 43.8 percent of the votes with the Union and, together with the FDP, can govern the country for four more years.
For the first time, he also brought politicians from the new federal states into his cabinet, including the then 36-year-old Angela Merkel. She gets the new Ministry for Women and Youth. It emerged from the former Federal Ministry of Health, which Kohl divided into the departments of health, family and senior citizens and women and youth. “Dreimädelhaus” is what the deputies in Bonn call the construct.
Gerda Hasselfeldt speaks about Angela Merkel
In the sixth episode of “ÜberMerkel – Familiar Stories” stern editor-in-chief Anna-Beeke Gretemeier speaks to Merkel’s fellow campaigners from the “House of Three Girls”. The Minister of Health Gerda Hasselfeldt (CSU) reports, among other things, on the difficulties that Angela Merkel faced when she took office, also in dealing with her male colleagues: “The women’s problem is not necessarily the issue that all cabinet members see on the agenda with the same verve, but that always has a bit of a niche existence”, she knows how to describe from the time.
“About Merkel – telling stories”
Angela Merkel was Chancellor for 16 years. The first. At the end of 2021 she resigned her post, now there is a man in office. What is left of her? What was she like, the chancellor? How is she as a boss, as a friend, as a feminist? For years, the story of Angela Merkel was mostly told by men. stern– Editor-in-chief Anna-Beeke Gretemeier meets for the podcast “ÜberMerkel – Vertraute recounting” with companions of the former Chancellor – yes, only with women. The conversations show new perspectives and thus draw a very personal audio portrait.
“ÜberMerkel – Familiar stories” appears weekly on Tuesdays at AudioNow, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music and everywhere there are podcasts. You can also find all episodes here.
Hannelore Rönsch speaks about Angela Merkel
Similar also has Hannelore Rönsch to report. After the federal elections in 1990, the CDU politician took over the women’s and senior citizens’ department in the “Dreimädelhaus”. In the podcast episode, she speaks openly about networks of men and women in politics and how Angela Merkel asserted herself in the Bonn government in the early 1990s. And Rönsch tells when she noticed that Merkel was striving for higher things: “I also said this briefly to Friedrich Merz, who only had a smile for it.”
You can hear that and much more in the sixth episode of “ÜberMerkel – Telling Trusted Ones”.
Sources and additional material for the sixth episode of “ÜberMerkel”
“ÜberMerkel – Familiar stories” appears weekly on Tuesdays at AudioNow, Spotify, iTunes, Amazon Music and everywhere there are podcasts. You can also find all episodes here.