Angela Merkel: A Chancellorship Forged in Crisis

Chapter 10

Apostles (How She Works)

Merkel’s chancellery stands at the heart of the rebuilt German capital, an island of glass and concrete eight times the size of the White House. Constructed on the banks of the River Spree, the vast postmodernist structure occupies a space in the center of Berlin left blank after the war and throughout the subsequent 40 years of division. It is part of a complex of government buildings – parliamentarians’ offices, committee rooms, a canteen, a creche for lawmakers’ children – envisaged as a “ribbon of the federal government” binding the two sides of the city that intersected at the river, forming the East–West border until 1989.

As a statement of intent, the chancellery is anything but subtle. Architects Axel ...