Joachim Sauer: biography, scientific career. Spouse of German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Spouses of politicians are often not deprived of a romantic halo. An example of this is Joachim Sauer, Professor of Theoretical Chemistry.

Angry husband

Joachim Sauer (nationality, quite predictably, German) is the husband of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, perhaps the most powerful woman in the world. He never gives interviews in the media and only occasionally appears in public with his wife. Sauer missed her inauguration in 2005 and drew the media outrage by watching the event on TV at her Berlin University. A German newspaper once wrote that he was "invisible as a molecule." In addition, his surname in translation means "angry" or "sour".

German economy

In addition, he became famous for his frugality. For example, according to the German media, he flew alone on a budget airline flight to Italy, where he and Merkel spent their holidays, instead of paying a nominal fee and accompanying it on a government plane.

Practical listener

While his wife is constantly in the spotlight amidst her battle with the economic crisis of the Eurozone, Sauer seems to be happy to remain anonymous outside his circle.

"Thank you for your interest," he replied via e-mail, rejecting the request for an interview. The government and representative Angela Merkel also declined to comment.

Friends and colleagues say that the German media misread Sauer. People familiar with it describe not a grumbler, but rather, a practical person with a dry sense of humor. According to them, Joachim Sauer (his pedigree can be fully traced in a small mining town behind the iron curtain in the former East Germany, which emphasizes his closeness to the people) is a valuable listener for his wife performing one of the most difficult jobs in Europe.

Spouses like hiking. According to the famous alpinist Messner, with whom Joachim Sauer and Angela Merkel traveled through the Alps, the clichés that circulate in the German media about the Chancellor's husband, have nothing to do with reality. In fact, he is an independent person. Witty and profound, Sauer can be incredibly funny, and he is very smart. This is the ideal partner of the Chancellor.

Joachim Sauer: Biography

In the south of Germany, not far from Dresden, is a small mining town of Khozen. Here on April 19, 1949, Joachim Sauer was born. His parents are the famous local confectioner and insurance agent Richard Sauer, who died in 1972, and Elfried, who lived until 1999. He has a twin sister and an older brother. A few months after Joachim's birth, Khosena became part of East Germany and was separated from the rest of the world by the Iron Curtain.

Sauer met Merkel in 1981. She, the last-year physics student, was 27. He, a teacher at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, had 32. Both had spouses. Marriage Angels with Ulrich Merkel, also a physicist, ended in divorce in 1982.

Joachim Sauer, whose children - Adrian and Daniel - were born in his previous marriage, broke up with his chemist wife in 1983 and left the joint apartment. They divorced in 1985, after a 16-year-old marriage.

Merkel did not comment on the beginning of her relationship with her husband, but it attracted the attention of the East German security service. According to the biography of the leader of Germany, the Stasi noticed their frequent meetings during the lunch break, when both were married to others.

Phenomenal pupil

In the preface to his thesis on physics in 1986, Merkel thanked Sauer for his "critical remarks." Her future husband was a phenomenal student. In 1974, at the age of 25, at the University of Humboldt, he received his doctorate in chemistry with the highest grade and taught there before moving the Academy of Sciences to Berlin in 1977. His work gained recognition in the West. Since 1977, before the unification of Germany, Joachim Sauer worked at the Academy of Sciences at the Institute of Physical Chemistry. Despite the fact that he was not a member of the Communist Party of Germany, he managed to make a career as a scientist and almost become a nomenklatura worker.

Behind the Iron Curtain

Non-partisan status meant that Joachim Sauer could not leave the Soviet bloc until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Reinhart Alrichs, who headed the research group of the University of Karlsruhe, where the scientist worked for some time, described him as one of the 30 best chemists in the world, just below the level of those who receive the Nobel Prize.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Angela took up politics, and Joachim spent a year in San Diego, where he worked at the biochemical institute BIOSYM Technologies, a company that developed software to help check the molecular structure of drugs. He returned to Humboldt in 1992 and specializes in zeolites, porous minerals that can be used anywhere - from processing nuclear fuel to medicines.

Although he does not talk about life with Merkel, a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin in 2010 gave an interview to the bulletin of this institution, in which he reflected on the life of the scientist behind the Iron Curtain. According to him, he was once invited to the United States to give a lecture, but the authorities said that he can not do this because he is not a scientist who is allowed to travel to the West. Therefore, instead of him, someone else went. Sauer was uncomfortable.

It was always a challenge to find the right balance to resist the Communist Party and not have trouble. The trick was to look every morning in the eye to your reflection in the mirror, but not be thrown out of the university.

Love for Wagner

Joachim Sauer and Angela Merkel lived together for more than ten years before they formally formalized their relationship in 1998 under pressure from the church and some of its allies in the conservative Christian Democratic Union of Germany. Many considered it inappropriate for a conservative political leader to live with someone outside of marriage. Angela and Joachim signed without any ceremony and witnesses in the district registry office of Berlin. Even friends and friends learned about this from the media.

"First husband" of Germany is an ardent admirer of the opera and shares his wife's love for Richard Wagner and long-distance marches. Messner says that they are amazingly suited to each other, given their busy schedule.

Merkel is the main leader of Europe, but in the international arena she usually stands alone. Joachim Sauer accompanies her when the protocol makes it inevitable, and he rarely allows himself to speak out in public.

When they appear together, it sometimes seems that Merkel forgets about her husband. In 2011, when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the White House, she stepped out of her limousine and walked up several steps until she stopped, as if remembering that she had forgotten Sauer, who was hurrying to catch up with her.

"Phantom of the Opera"

While other "first spouses", such as Michelle Obama, sometimes express themselves on topical issues or support favorite topics, husband Merkel does not speak out publicly. His determination to stay out of the public eye can sometimes seem hostile.

"I'm not going to say anything in the microphone," he growled into the camera on the red carpet at the Bayreuth Opera Festival in 2005, when his wife was still the leader of the opposition.

A year or two after Merkel came to power, German journalists refused to interview an impregnable person, whom they called the "Phantom of the Opera."

Principal silent

Little known Sauer means that he can live without bodyguards and journalists at work and at home, in a modest apartment, just a few blocks east of where the Berlin Wall was.

Persistent refusals to open, he earned the respect of some representatives of the German press.

According to political analyst Hugo Mueller-Fogg from the popular newspaper Bild, journalists expected that if they continue to insist on their own, then sooner or later he will surrender. But Joachim Sauer adheres to his principles, and in this there is something that should be admired.

After Mueller-Fogg attacked him for the admission of Merkel's inauguration, the chancellor answered the journalist in person. She said that the journalist should not worry about her husband, because he will accompany her to all events when his absence can trigger a diplomatic incident. And he did it. For such a transparent society as the German, it is indeed quite remarkable that Sauer managed to survive for so long.

"Important Spotlighter"

Merkel in the past described her conversations with her husband as "vital" and called him "very good adviser".

She once told a German magazine about the "Bunte" celebrities that her husband and she are busy with their work: she is not a housewife, and he is not a householder.

When Joachim Sauer sits with her breakfast and reads newspapers on weekends, he puts before her political questions, like any ordinary citizen. He does not participate in political intrigues or machinations in Berlin and is not interested in them. According to the employee Merkel, she several times after coming to work said that her husband does not understand what the government is doing, after which the discussion began. But he does not influence politics actively. A spouse for her is a means of checking the reality of things.

According to a close associate of Merkel, Sauer is definitely an important "spotter" for her, with whom she can talk in the evenings about something other than politics. He is the one who will openly tell her what she thinks.

Sound effect

And he does say what he thinks. In August 2001, Sauer caused a stir in Berlin, filing an official complaint about the noise from the performance of the theater in the open air opposite his Berlin apartment. He faxed the complaint to the authorities for an evening "noise effect". This was confirmed by Adrienne Gehler, an official of the municipality, who then intervened in the summer production of the tragicomedy Heinrich von Kleist "Amphitryon." Performance at 8 dB exceeded the statutory noise limit of 60 dB. Gehler spent days on calls to various city institutions to find a way to close the show. According to her, to live in the center of Germany's largest city and complain about a slight excess of noise at 8:30 pm, as a result of which the theatrical performance was stopped, is a grotesque. "If he wants peace and quiet, like in a forest, let him move into the forest," was her summary. The dispute fell into the headlines of Berlin newspapers amid speculation that, perhaps, political influence was used to close the show. Merkel did not comment on the incident.

The apartment in Berlin is located in an old building next to the Pergamon Museum. In the adjoining apartments there is a guard, and at the windows often there are curious passers-by. In addition, the couple have a house in Mecklenburg, where they sometimes leave to relax, doing vegetable gardens, wandering through meadows and swimming in forest water.

German quantum chemist

At the Department of Chemistry at the University of Berlin Humboldt, colleagues and students were instructed not to spread the word about Sauer. According to the 29-year-old student Sven, who knew the professor for five years, he simply wants to be recognized as a scientist, not as a husband of Merkel.

Others describe Sauer as a strict old school professor who forbids talking, drinking, eating and reading in his lectures. Sven once heard his joke, but it was so thin and abstruse that only a few people could understand it. She was not even funny. But some laughed - more out of courtesy.