Berlin – Mixing solemnity with a bit of humor, Germany’s parliament elected Angela Merkel chancellor Tuesday, making her the first woman to lead a postwar German government and the first chancellor to have grown up under the communist government of the former East Germany.
After the vote, in which 397 of the 614 members of parliament supported her, Merkel was sworn in as the eighth chancellor since the end of World War II, bringing to a close two months of intraparty bickering and deep political uncertainty that followed an election in September in which no candidate won a majority.
Merkel takes office in an unusual power-sharing arrangement between her Christian Democratic Party and the rival Social Democratic Party of the previous chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, in which the losing Social Democrats get half the posts in the 16-member Cabinet.
“Dear Mrs. Merkel, you are the first-ever elected female head of government in Germany,” the parliamentary speaker, Norbert Lammert, announced after the secret ballot was counted. Then, to a roar of laughter, Lammert continued: “That is a strong signal for many women and certainly for some men too.”
The vote was a triumph for Merkel, the daughter of a Protestant minister who took his family from Hamburg to East Germany when she was a small child.
After her party’s poorer-than- expected showing in the September election, some commentators declared her politically finished. Schroeder vowed there would be no coalition government unless he remained chancellor, but after the lawmakers voted Tuesday, Schroeder, smiling broadly, became the first person to congratulate Merkel, 51.
She takes power in Germany at a time of crisis, with the economy in a prolonged state of stagnation, unemployment over 10 percent and a public divided over what to do. Moreover, in exchange for getting the Social Democrats to join a coalition, she had to drop key aspects of her original program, which included loosening Germany’s labor laws and trimming its generous social welfare benefits.