Test your Merkel IQ

Merkel has topped Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s most powerful women every year from 2006 until 2020, with the exception of 2010. Who interrupted her reign?

Hillary Clinton, then US Secretary of State

Dilma Rousseff, then President of Brazil

Michelle Obama, then First Lady of the United States

US talk show queen Oprah Winfrey

Her political style inspired the verb ‘merkeln’. What does it mean?

To steal others’ ideas and pass them off as your own

To be overly frugal when it comes to public expenditure

To power-dress with the same kind of outfit – day in, day out

To stall on taking action or saying anything of substance

Everyone knows the Bundeskanzlerin is a scientist – but what kind?

A physicist (her doctoral thesis was on the reactions of hydrocarbons)

An epidemiologist (no surprise that she knows her Covid stuff so well)

A biologist (she’s one of the few CDU members who accept Darwin’s theory of evolution)

A computer scientist (despite Germany being famously behind on all things tech)

Let’s take a look at Merkel’s Bundestag voting record. Which of the following things did she oppose? (Multiple answers possible!)

Halting deportations of asylum seekers back to battle-torn Syria (2011)

A ban on the neo-Nazi NPD party (2013)

A ban on fracking (2016)

A historic bill legalising same-sex marriage (2017)

Abolishing a Nazi-era law forbidding the “advertisement” of abortion services (2019)

Free access to contraception for people on low incomes (2019)

After styling Mutti’s hair, German hairdressing royalty Udo Walz once exclaimed: “I’ve never met a woman…”

�… as particular about her fringe as her.”

�… who tells filthier jokes than her.”

�… who writes text messages as rapidly as her.”

�… as boring as her.”

When the Berlin Wall fell on Thursday, November 9, 1989, East Germans rushed to the border to celebrate. Where was Merkel?

Visiting her Oma who was then in a care home

At the sauna in Prenzlauer Berg (she went every Thursday with her friend)

Reading a Krimi, her favourite literary genre

Pounding the meat for her family’s weekly Schnitzelabend

Merkel is known for her unemotional style of politics and inscrutable countenance. But one world leader brought her to the verge of tears. Who?

Barack Obama when he pressured her at a last-chance summit to save the eurozone in 2011

Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, who was caught on mic calling her an “unfuckable lard-arse”

Theresa May over her no-hope Brexit plan (they were tears of laughter)

Donald Trump when he refused to shake her hand in the Oval Office

Which public figure painted this lop-sided portrait of the chancellor?

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (he submitted it as a proposal for the East Side Gallery)

Former US President George W Bush (who fills his retirement with amateur portraiture)

Prince Charles (as a gift to mark her state visit to Windsor this summer)

Former EU boss Jean-Claude Juncker (painted during his AA rehab residency)

In 2007, Vladimir Putin allegedly tried to scare Merkel by bringing into the room an animal she’s known to be afraid of. Which animal was it?

His rambunctious black Labrador Koni

A fluffy white seal (yes, Merkel has a phobia of marine mammals)

Mishka, a retired dancing bear from the Moscow State Circus

An eagle, the national bird of both countries

When she’s not attending marathon summits or scaling new heights in public spending, which of these outdoor activities does Merkel enjoy?

Golfing

Bird-watching

Cross-country skiing

Ice-skating

Merkel is unified Germany’s first Ossi chancellor. Where was she actually born?

Templin, Brandenburg

Wittenberg (the famous Lutherstadt)

Leipzig

Hamburg

Merkel, the world’s most famous German, is in fact one quarter:

French (the chancellor makes a mean coq au vin, a recipe she learned from her Alsatian grandmother)

Polish (her grandfather was a Polish independence fighter who fought against Germany in World War I)

Russian (she stayed with her babushka during her time as a student in Moscow)

Hungarian (she shares a distant relative with Viktor Orbán)

Merkel is famously loyal when it comes to buying groceries. Where does she go shopping?

The LPG Biomarkt (she’s a card-carrying member)

Fleischerei Gerlach, one of Berlin’s best butchers

Supermarket Hit Ullrich on Mohrenstraße (conveniently located near her home)

Aldi (she always makes a point of supporting Germany’s world-leading discount supermarket)

Test your Merkel IQ

More Quizzes