The nicknames Ursula von der Leyen
has acquired over the course of her 29-year career in German politics
tell their own story about the new president of the European commission.
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During her time in charge of the family ministry, she was first called Krippen-Ursel (“crèche Ursel”), a conservative closet feminist set on expanding nursery places, and then Zensursula, a control freak who wanted to shield German youth from the dark sides of the internet.
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When she became Germany’s first female defence minister in 2013, her (mostly male) detractors referred to her as Flinten-Uschi (“shotgun Uschi”), a caricature of the bossy career woman.
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A liberal in conservative clothing or a pious authoritarian matriarch? If there is one quality the European commission’s first female president
shares with her mentor Angela Merkel, it is that her political
persuasions can be difficult to classify. Unlike Germany’s
consensus-seeking chancellor, however, she is not afraid to raise
heckles and divide opinion to drive through the policies she believes
are right.
Born
in October 1958, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen spent her first 13 years
in Brussels, where her father was one of the first pan-European civil
servants. She attended the European School in Uccle, graduating two
years before a certain Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson joined the same establishment.
One
of seven children, she was raised in a Christian household that adhered
to the traditional model of the West German nuclear family. As state
premier of Lower Saxony, her father, Ernst Albrecht, became a leading
figure of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and a bete noire for the
burgeoning Green movement, with whom he clashed over the opening of a
nuclear waste depository.
Her mother, Heidi, took a supporting role, at times leading a family choir that serenaded its patriarch on German TV shows, and stating: “The best way for me to gain the respect of the public is through the role of motherliness.”
But if her father’s career enabled her international upbringing, it also allowed Von der Leyen to step out from his shadow.
When she was studying economics at the University of Göttingen in the
late 1970s, her father was informed that his family could be a
potential target for the Red Army Faction, a terrorist group also known
as the Baader-Meinhof gang, and that his daughter should consider moving to another university.
Von
der Leyen adopted the pseudonym Rose Ladson – a combination of her
family nickname and the surname of her American great-grandmother – and
enrolled at the London School of Economics.
“I
lived much more than I studied,” she told the weekly Zeit. “No details,
please. Only this: in 1978 I immersed myself for one year in this
seething, international, colourful city. For me, coming from the rather
monotonous, white Germany, that was fascinating.
“For
me, London was the epitome of modernity: freedom, the joy of life,
trying everything. This gave me an inner freedom that I have kept until
today. And another thing I have kept: the realisation that different
cultures can get on together very well.”
Switching to study medicine, she later worked as an assistant
physician at a women’s clinic in Hanover and graduated as a doctor of
medicine in 1991.
After
she joined the CDU in 1990, on the same day her father stepped down
from his job as state premier, her inner freedom made its mark on the
posts she held, first as a regional and national delegate and then at
the family, work and defence ministries.
“She
has an incredible amount of energy”, said Daniel Goffart, a political
correspondent for the news magazine Focus who co-wrote her biography in
2015. “You especially saw that in her bitter and protracted battle to
modernise her party’s view on the role of the family.” Under her watch,
Germany introduced a law guaranteeing every child over 12 months of age
a place at a daycare facility, and a paid parental leave scheme that
includes at least two months of paid leave for fathers. She forced
Merkel to drop her opposition to boardroom quotas for women, even though the policy was later defeated in the Bundestag.
Ursula von der Leyen baking cookies with her seven children in 2003. Photograph: Jochen Luebke/AFP
Married
since 1986 to a physician, Heiko, and mother to seven children, Von der
Leyen has juggled a prolific career with family life – at the cost of
popularity within her own party, some say. Instead of attending CDU
summer fetes in rural Lower Saxony, said her biographer Goffart, she
preferred to spend weekends at the family home in Beinhorn near Hanover
when her children were still young.
Among her critics, the 60-year-old Von der Leyen has a reputation as an Einzelgängerin,
a lone wolf with an instinct for front page-grabbing interviews and
photo ops, but lacking the gift to pass the inner freedom driving her
career down to the teams she works with.
If Von der Leyen’s approval ratings have recently plummeted,
making her the least popular minister in Merkel’s cabinet, it is
because her handling of Germany’s notoriously under-funded military at
times displayed those same deficiencies.
When she diagnosed the troops with an “attitude problem” after the
emergence of stories about rightwing extremist activities and hazing of
new recruits, she was accused – and not only by members of the
Bundeswehr – of choosing a good write-up over loyalty to her staff. “If
she has a weakness, it is her tendency to excessive stage management,”
said Goffart.
More
recently, Von der Leyen grabbed negative headlines over the accusation
that her defence ministry had allocated over-inflated contracts worth
hundreds of millions of euros to external consultants. A parliamentary
committee is investigating the ministry for accusations of nepotism, and
Von der Leyen is expected to be invited as a witness in December. In
Brussels and Berlin, she will have two stages to manage.
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