Alice Schwarzer and Angela Merkel have been in contact for almost 30 years. Some of them were "very strange encounters".
One has been Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany for 15 years, the other Germany's most famous feminist for many decades. With her magazine "Emma", Alice Schwarzer (77) took a critical position on "Kohl's Girls" long before Angela Merkel (66) was elected Chancellor. However, this did not prevent the two women from exchanging ideas regularly for almost 30 years, as Schwarzer describes in an interview with the editorial network Germany (RND) and in her new autobiography "Lifetime Achievement".
"We had dinner together for the first time in 1991, at the Italian restaurant on the Rhine. Merkel was Minister for Women and got the full broadside as 'Kohl's girl' in the media," recalls Schwarzer when asked how she met Merkel. "Even then, she impressed me with her intelligence, her humor and her integrity. Since then we have kept in touch, through all the ups and downs." There were "some very strange encounters between 1991 and 2020".
When Merkel won the election for Chancellor in 2005 against Gerhard Schröder (76), who nevertheless believed himself to be the winner in the infamous elephant round, the two women "phoned several times. That was really a dark hour for a democracy. The loser said to the winner's face: She can't do it! I will continue to rule. All because the winner was a woman. Only from then on did I interfere in the political debate pro Merkel ".