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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Philip Oltermann

Regrets, feminism, and Trump’s ‘fascination’ with Putin: key takeways from Merkel’s memoir

‘Yes, I am a feminist, in my way,’ Angela Merkel says in her memoir.
Merkel with Barack Obama in 2015. ‘Yes, I am a feminist, in my way,’ Angela Merkel says in her memoir. Photograph: Michael Kappeler/AFP/Getty Images

Angela Merkel was notoriously discreet and privacy-conscious as Germany’s chancellor, rarely veering off message during her 16 years in office.

In her eagerly anticipated political autobiography Freedom: Memoirs 1954-2021, she has hardly turned into a gossipmonger overnight. But across 721 pages – published on Tuesday in German and English thanks to nine different translators working on chunks of the book simultaneously – there are glimpses of a Merkel previously unseen.

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