Status: December 8th, 2021 3:12 p.m.
During her tenure she met four different US presidents and saw ten SPD chairmen come and mostly go again: Angela Merkel was Chancellor of the Federal Republic for 16 years. A look back in numbers.
5860
Merkel was in office for so many days. This brings Merkel very close to the record set by long-term Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who was head of government for a total of 5870 days – 16 years and four weeks. Merkel missed the record by just ten days.
439.2
The Robert Koch Institute reported this value on the day of Merkel’s departure by the Bundeswehr with a major tattoo as the seven-day incidence of corona infections. The total number of registered cases of infection since the beginning of the pandemic is now more than six million – Merkel is leaving the country in a mood of crisis.
10
The long duration of Merkel’s term of office can also be seen in the number of SPD chairmen with whom she had to deal as Chancellor. A total of ten names are to be mentioned: Platzeck, Beck, Müntefering, Gabriel, Nahles – then the interim head trio Dreyer / Schwesig / Schäfer-Gümbel and currently the double top consisting of Saskia Esken and Norbert Walter-Borjans. In twelve of her 16 years as chancellor, Merkel ruled with the SPD as a junior partner.
51.2
When Merkel last took office, the cabinet was on average 51.2 years old. The new government is getting younger, the average age in the Scholz cabinet is 50.4. The youngest ministers are Annalena Baerbock and Anne Spiegel von den Grünen at 40, the senior in the cabinet is the boss Scholz himself at 63.
648
There are 648 kilometers as the crow flies between the Chancellery in Berlin and the EU Council building in Brussels. Merkel has not covered any other flight route more often – she has traveled to EU appointments more than a hundred times. As Chancellor she traveled millions of kilometers: she was in the USA 23 times, in Russia 20 times, in China 13 times. Her travels also took her to countries in which a Federal Chancellor had never been a guest – such as Colombia, Mali, Niger, Angola and Greenland.
4th
From George W. Bush to Joe Biden: Merkel had to deal with four US presidents. Sometimes it worked better – for example with Barack Obama – and sometimes worse, for example with Donald Trump. Since her election as Chancellor, Merkel has also dealt with four French presidents and nine Italian prime ministers. In terms of political longevity, it is only surpassed by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin, who has been in power for 21 years.
171
It was the longest-running formation of a government in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany: 171 days passed between the 2017 federal election and Merkel’s fourth election as Chancellor in the Bundestag in March 2018. Merkel had initially negotiated in detail with the Greens and the FDP about the formation of a Jamaica coalition. After the FDP broke the talks, Merkel brought a new edition of the coalition with the SPD on the way in tough talks. This year things went faster: 73 days passed from the federal election to the election of Chancellor Scholz.
41.5
The result of the federal election of 2013 marked the high point of Merkel’s traction: the Union achieved 41.5 percent – its best result under Merkel. The Merkel Union performed worst in the 2017 election, when it came to 32.9 percent. In 2021 it got even worse: with the chancellor candidate Armin Laschet, the CDU / CSU fell to a low of 24.1 percent. Merkel herself had clearly won her constituency of Western Pomerania-Rügen eight times in a row since 1990. After the election that year, he fell to the SPD for the first time.