Kati Marton - The Chancellor: The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel

Kati Marton is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including True Believer: Stalins American Spy and Enemies of the People: My Familys Journey to America, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Having grown up in communist Hungary, Marton brings to her biography of Merkel a shared experience of life behind the Iron Curtain. An award-winning former NPR correspondent and ABC News Bureau Chief in Germany, she now lives in New York City.

Writing the life story of a subject so little interested in having her story told has been, to say the least, challenging. The absence of a paper trailno journals or private correspondence or even staff memos have been available from one of recent historys most private public figuresonly enhanced the challenge. Nevertheless, Angela Merkel allowed me to observe her at work during the past four years and has not prevented me from speaking with some of her closest friends and aides. Knowing how scrupulously she guards her privacy, I am grateful for the degree of freedom she allowed me, and for the generosity of her aides and friends in submitting to hours of questions from me over the last four years. I have done my utmost to repay their kindness and their faith in me with a serious and balanced biography of Angela Merkel. Though often frustrating, piercing the enigma of this unique figure has been a powerfuland even life-alteringexperience for me, for which I am grateful.

I wish to particularly thank Eva Christiansen, Volker Schlndorff, Thomas Bagger, Wolfgang Ischinger, and Christoph Heusgen for their many hours of always enlightening conversation over the past years. Volkers friendship and memories of his interactions with Angela Merkel vastly enrich this account. I thank him from the bottom of my heart. Long before I started this work, the distinguished German American historian Fritz Stern and my late husband, Richard Holbrooke (whom Fritz accompanied to Bonn when Richard was ambassador), helped to bring both Angela Merkel and postwar Germany to vivid life, and deepened my understanding of this lands multilayered history. Sadly, neither Fritz nor Richard are alive to read this, but I hope they would approve of the result. The American Academy in Berlinmy late husbands proud legacy was my refuge on and off during my research. I thank Gahl Burt and Berit Ebert for their always warm welcome and their friendship. I can never sufficiently thank Travis Penner, who took time from his duties at the academy to accompany me on travels through Germany and was my indispensable translator and researcher. I also thank Almut Schoenfeld, who helped me navigate Germanys complex politics and shared her immense knowledge of Berlin during the early stages of my research. I also thank the Rockefeller Foundation for granting me a fellowship to their sublime Bellagio Center on Lake Como where I wrote my first draft. Back in New York, Ramya Jayanthi, eternally unflappable, kept me and my research more or less together. I am fortunate to have had her steady and intelligent presence. Geoffrey Schandler and Ida Rothchild made wonderful suggestions in the structure of my early drafts, and I thank them for their thoughtful input. My friends and much-admired fellow scribes Richard Bernstein and Anne Nelson gave unselfishly of their time and made many improvements on the manuscript. I thank my indispensable friend Joel Motley, among my first and most discerning readers, for his many contributions and support throughout the lock down. My friend, the Danish American writer Morten Hoi Jensen also made smart contributions to the final draft. Crary Pullen lived up to her reputation as a remarkable photo researcher; the book was enriched by the wonderful images that she found.

I began this work with my editor of the past four books, the legendary Alice Mayhew. Although Alice left us suddenly just as Covid surged, her presence and her years of wise counsel and boundless enthusiasm did not leave meor this book. I am grateful for the brilliant team of Priscilla Painton and Megan Hogan at Simon & Schuster for making this new child theirs and for their many suggestions, too. To have achieved such a seamless transition during lockdown has been remarkable.

As always, Amanda Urban was my friend, spur, and guide throughout. I cannot imagine my writing life without her in my corner.

Nor can I conceive of life without my essential tribe: my offspring Lizzie and Chris, as well as Corrine and Ilona, my siblings Julia and Andrew, nephews and nieces Mathieu, Sabine, Lucien, Leonard, Orson, Nicolas, Lili, and Joaquim. Dispersed in Paris, Brussels, New York, Fort Worth, Texas, and Inverness, California, we overcame long distances this past hard year with Zoom calls, FaceTime, and borderless love.

Among the many people to whom I am indebted for making this project interesting and often even enjoyable is this partial list of the people I interviewedmany in multiple sessions. I cannot thank them enough for their patience and for their matchless insights:

Alexis Papahelas, Almut Mller, Andreas Apelt, Anna Sauerbrey, Antony Blinken, Ben Rhodes, Bernd Ulrich, Lady Catherine Ashton, Charles Kupchan, Charlotte Knobloch, Christian Demuth, Christoph Heusgen, Dr. Christoph Meyer, Constanze Stelzenmller, David Gill, Daniel Baer, Derek Chollet, Derek Scally, Dekel Peretz, Ellen Ueberschr, Ambassador John Emerson, Ambassador Emily Haber, Erika Benn, Eva Christiansen, Evelyn Farkas, Fiona Hill, Frank Mieszkalski, Fritz Stern, Gary Smith, Georg Diez, Griff Witte, Henrik Enderlein, Henry Kissinger, Richard Haass, Henry Hank Paulson, Herlinde Koelbl, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jacques Rupnik, Jacqueline Boysen, Jacqueline Ross, James Davis, Joerg Hackerschmidt, Joseph Stiglitz, former president Joachim Gauck, former foreign minister Joschka Fischer, Joshua Yaffa, Karl-Theodor von Guttenberg, Karen Donfried, Karin Pritzel, Kevin Rudd, Kerstin Kohlenberg, George Diez, George Packer, Lars Zimmermann, Lawrence Bacow, former president Lothar de Maizire, Marcus Walker, Manuela Villing, Roger Cohen, Daniel Benjamin, Joshua Hammer, Matthew Pottinger, Melanie Annan, Michael Birnbaum, Michael Naumann, Michael Schindhelm, Nicolaus Fest, Paul Krger, Peter Jungen, Peter Schneider, Philip Murphy, Rachel Donadio, Reiner Epplemann, Reinhard Gnzel, Reinhold Haberlandt, Ren Pfister, Robin Alexander, Steffen Seibert, Shai Levy, Josef Joffe, Shimon Stein, Sigmount A. Knigsberg, Stefan Kornelius, Stephen Greenblatt, Thomas Bagger, Thorsten Benner, Thomas de Maizire, Timothy Snyder, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, Peter Wittig, Tim Wirth, Timothy Garton Ash, Ulrike Demmer, Ulrich Schneich, Ulrich Wilhelm, Victoria Nuland, Volker Berghahn, Volker Schlndorff, Werner Patzelt, William Drozdiak, Yascha Mounk.

True Believer: Stalins Last American Spy

Paris: A Love Story

Enemies of the People: My Familys Journey to America

The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World

Hidden Power: Presidential Marriages That Shaped Our History

A Death in Jerusalem: The Assassination by a Jewish Extremist of the First Arab-Israeli Peacemaker

Wallenberg: Missing Hero

The Polk Conspiracy: Murder and Cover-Up in the Case of CBS News Correspondent George Polk

An American WomanA Novel

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