BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel has revealed she finds “nice eyes” attractive in men, had a Polish grandfather and can easily handle an all-night summit without sleep.
She has spoken about her early years in the former East Germany but insisted she never served as a propaganda secretary in its communist youth league. For a notoriously guarded leader, the tidbits about the private life of Europe’s most powerful woman have recently turned from a trickle into a steady election-year flow.
It is a tactic that analysts say could either help humanise Merkel or backfire in a close race ahead of the September 22 vote.
Amid the eurozone debt troubles, Merkel has been vilified abroad and portrayed with a Hitler moustache for pushing austerity, and applauded at home for her prudent crisis management.
But beyond the stereotypes, little was known about the 58-year-old, who is variously painted as dour and matronly by her detractors, and sharp and pragmatic by her fans. This has changed in recent weeks as Merkel has opened the door, albeit just a crack further, on her private life.
The German public has recently learned about her roots in neighbouring Poland and watched her chat wittily at a forum organised by popular women’s magazine Brigitte.
At that event, where she quickly won over the room with anecdotes and quiet charm, Germany’s first female leader revealed, for example, that she has a “camel-like” ability to store energy for sleepless all-night summits.
Addressing her cautious governing style, often characterised as the politics of small steps not grand visions, she spoke about the importance of “silence, so you can then speak intelligently”.
Merkel also explained her habit of forming a diamond shape with her index fingers and thumbs in photo shoots as a way of solving the problem of where to put her hands. And when pressed on what she finds attractive in men, the trained physicist Dr Merkel, rather than deflecting the question, confessed to a weakness for nice eyes.
AFP
