Angela Merkel (r) and her former office manager Beate Baumann in 2011.
Photo: dpa | Peter Kneffel
Almost nobody knows Beate Baumann. She was Angela Merkel’s office manager for decades. And therefore one of the most important women in German politics, right behind the Chancellor. Because Baumann had to organize everything for them. Their most important question was not: What policy does Merkel pursue, but rather: How does Merkel influence it? According to “Spiegel,” she coined her own term for this: tonality. That was what mattered most to Merkel. Always on the verge of boredom and then… winning everything.
The two women are said to have gotten along very well. That’s why they wrote the ex-CDU leader’s autobiography together. It’s succinctly called “Freedom” and will be published next week. Who knows that this was an old greeting from the Social Democrats in the Weimar Republic? On the other hand, under Merkel it was almost impossible to distinguish the CDU from the SPD, much to the detriment of the latter.
Merkel was head of government for almost as long as record chancellor Helmut Kohl. He said about his office manager Juliane Weber: “There are only two people who know everything about me, my wife and Juliane Weber.” It’s probably similar with Baumann, only she managed to stay almost completely in the background. There are hardly any photos of her and no quotes either, so she too is a “perfect machinist of power,” as the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” once called Weber.
What I know: Baumann was born in 1963, comes from Osnabrück, studied German, was in the Junge Union and came to Merkel when she was still Minister for Women and Youth under Helmut Kohl. On the recommendation of Christian Wulff, one of her later main competitors in the CDU. Merkel praised him away, but he failed miserably as Federal President.
Baumann is also said to be very tough as well as warm. The whole keyboard is familiar from every crime novel. She founded her own company with Merkel to market “freedom”: two bosses on the move.
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