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 Angela Dorothea Merkel, born in Hamburg, is the Chancellor of Germany. Merkel, elected to the German Parliament from Mecklenburg-Vorpommerng, has been the chairman of the Democratic Union CDU since 2000, and Chairwoman of the CDU-CSU parliamentary party group from 2002 to 2005. Before getting involved in politics, she earned a doctorate in physics and worked as a chemist at a scientific academy in East Berlin. Merkel is the first former citizen of the German Democratic Republic to lead the reunited Germany and the first woman to lead Germany since it became a modern nation-state in 1871. She is also the youngest person to be German chancellor since the Second World War. Merkel is considered by Forbes Magazine to be the most powerful woman in the world at present. In 2008, she was awarded the Karlspreis (Charlemagne prize) for promoting European Unity.
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