Ursula von der Leyen – Doctor of administration
Profile of Germany’s defence minister.
Ursula von der Leyen’s appointment as Germany’s defence minister last December was the biggest surprise to emerge from almost three months of coalition talks between the Christian Democrats of Chancellor Angela Merkel and the opposition Social Democrats. Three months on, it looks the most natural of developments in a career that has taken the 55-year-old medical doctor from local-government posts in the Hanover region to one of the most important federal ministries in just ten years. She now looks like the lead candidate to succeed Merkel.
When the articulate and telegenic von der Leyen was first appointed to a job in the federal government, as minister for family affairs in 2005, there was an expectation that she would join the ranks of the women who held the post before her – 12 of the 15 office-holders over the preceding half century had been female – who had gone on to nothing terribly important. There had been exceptions, of course: Angela Merkel served as family minister in 1991-94, her first federal office. But as a rule, the family ministry, which also includes responsibility for seniors, women and youth, is seen as a post for lightweights, single-issue politicians or unproven newcomers.
For von der Leyen, the post of family minister was a springboard. A mother of seven children who had also been juggling a demanding career as a medical doctor and researcher, she was seen as a natural expert on the topics covered by her ministry. At the same time, she provoked an unusual measure of hostility, much of it to do with her privileged upbringing and her aristocratic bearing.
Von der Leyen was born in 1958 in Brussels, where her father, Ernst Albrecht, served as head of the private office of Hans von der Groeben, one of Germany’s two members of the newly-created European Commission. Albrecht had been a close aide to von der Groeben when the latter authored the Spaak report launching the European Economic Community and chaired the common-market committee that prepared the Treaty of Rome, the Community’s founding document. Albrecht became director-general for competition in 1967, at the age of just 37; he soon felt that his career had hit a wall. Four years later he returned with his family to Lower Saxony and went into politics. In 1976, he became prime minister of Lower Saxony, an office he would hold until 1990, when he lost an election to Gerhard Schröder. In 2008, when her father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, von der Leyen moved her family back in with her father. During his time as prime minister, Albrecht was fond of being photographed with his picture-perfect family around him, performing chamber music in their home. Belonging to an elite had not yet become toxic for German politicians.
Some of the hostility von der Leyen provoked when she entered federal politics seemed to be fuelled by the apparent facility with which she raised seven children while building a successful career. (Merkel, who does not have children, endured the opposite criticism as family minister – that she had no idea of the realities of bringing up children.) There were allegations that von der Leyen was cynically using her children to advance her political ambitions. There was also a feeling that she was too good to be true and therefore had to be a phoney.
Despite being dismissed as a lightweight, von der Leyen had a brilliant first 100 days in office and revealed herself to have solid political instincts. The new minister dominated the news with her calls for free day-care and for funds for stay-home parents, and she also benefitted from a very public fight with Peer Steinbrück, the coalition government’s centre-left finance minister, over how to finance these measures. Within just a couple of months of taking office, the previously obscure von der Leyen had joined the ranks of the ten most important national politicians, according to opinion polls. She turned out to be the biggest political talent to emerge from Merkel’s first government. Political defeats, including some inflicted by Merkel who refused to back some of the more expensive measures put forward by von der Leyen, did not chip away at the image of an exceptionally self-assured, competent and engaged minister. It does, however, have to be admitted that, some of the scathing media coverage of the early weeks was replaced by anti-von der Leyen sentiment from those wearied by her omnipresence in the news.
Her first 100 days as defence minister went rather less well; various legacy problems haunted the sprawling ministry. In order to get a grip on them, and to mark the beginning of a new era in the notoriously unwieldy ministry, von der Leyen – the first woman to hold the job – sacked the ministry’s top civil servant on her second day as minister. In February, von der Leyen was forced to sack two civil servants in charge of arms procurement over the cancellation of a multi-billion euro contract for fighter jets, after the scandal surrounding the cancellation and allegations of mismanagement threatened to engulf the new minister. She has now brought in consultants from McKinsey to review the way the ministry works, leading to a fair amount of grumbling in a ministry that has traditionally resisted anything smacking of interference. (Von der Leyen had also hired the company when she was appointed minister for labour and social affairs in the second Merkel administration in 2009, a step up from the family ministry.)
In handling these problems, von der Leyen has shown a toughness that has divided her opponents into those who pay her grudging respect and those who are now even more determined to make sure none of her reforms comes to pass.
Curriculum Vitae
1958: Born, Brussels
1977-80: Studied economics in Göttingen and Münster
1980-87: Studied medicine in Hanover
1988-92: Junior doctor at Hanover Medical School
1990: Joined the CDU
1991: Doctorate in medicine
1992-96: Lives in Stanford, US
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1998-: Research assistant at Hanover 2002 Medical School
2001: Master’s degree in public health
2001-04: Local government service in Hanover region
2003-05: Member of Lower Saxony parliament, minister for social affairs and health of Lower Saxony
2004: Joins the CDU praesidium
2005: Federal minister for family affairs
2009: Elected to the Bundestag
2009-13: Federal minister for labour
2013-: Federal minister for defence
The second group includes a number of very powerful men. Horst Seehofer, Bavaria’s prime minister and leader of the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Merkel’s CDU, told a small circle of associates earlier this year that von der Leyen was overrated and that the media were mesmerised by her eloquence – in other words, that she was a phoney. He told the newsweekly Der Spiegel that Merkel would be the CDU/CSU’s candidate for chancellor in 2017 – a clear stab at von der Leyen.
But von der Leyen’s associates stress that she did not take the defence post because nothing else was available, or merely as a stepping-stone for the chancellery. In pondering the appointment, she recognised an opportunity to make far-reaching changes both to the way the Bundeswehr operates and to German security policy, says a parliamentary aide who has known her for many years and describes her as a “convinced European”. Indeed, von der Leyen now finds herself among the most prominent advocates of a more assertive role for German security policy within the EU. That is a high-risk strategy, and it is not clear to what extent it is backed by Merkel, who has been conspicuously quiet on the question. By making the defence ministry her own, von der Leyen ensures that any problems to emerge there will be her responsibility. She is now, for the first time in her career, entirely on her own.