Merkel in photos: From football fan to Trump tamer

In power for so long that a whole generation of Germans grew up knowing only her as chancellor, Angela Merkel is due to bow out of politics following Sunday's elections. AFP takes a look back at images of the East German quantum chemist who leapt into politics, becoming the world's most powerful woman.

Merkel in photos: From football fan to Trump tamer

Around a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Merkel, then 36, stepped into a fishermen's hut on the northern German island of Ruegen. Around a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Merkel, then 36, stepped into a fishermen's hut on the northern German island of Ruegen. Credit: Getty Images

Dressed in a maroon cardigan, white T-shirt and long denim skirt, she began chatting with five fishermen wearing blue workers' overalls.

In 2005, her conservative CDU-CSU alliance narrowly won the election and Merkel was sworn in as Germany's first female chancellor in November. Barely a year in office, Germany's new chancellor would play host to the world's most-watched game -- at the 2006 football World Cup. Credit: Getty Images

The home team finished third, but after Germans dared to wave their flags joyously again, Time magazine branded Merkel

Images of her leaping up in the stands in unbridled joy when Germany score a goal have led German media to comment that

Striker Lukas Podolski in 2014 tweeted that Merkel's World Cup attendance at Germany's opening campaign in Brazil provided

If football saw the feel-good side of Merkel, the Greeks bore the brunt of a harder line. Unmoved by the pleas of Greece during the eurozone debt crisis, Merkel stuck to Germany's mantra demanding that Athens carry out austerity reforms in exchange for bailout loans. As Greece stood at the brink of an economic collapse that threatened to force it out of the eurozone in 2015, Greeks went on the march, with some bearing posters portraying Merkel with a Hitler moustache. Credit: AFP Photo

However, the dogma was smashed by the coronavirus pandemic, which saw Merkel making an extraordinary U-turn to incur huge debts to fund Germany's exit from the crisis. More remarkably, she and France's Emmanuel Macron spearheaded the 800-billion-euro ($950bn) EU recovery fund, which sees the European Commission raising money by issuing bonds on behalf of the entire 27-member bloc. Credit: AP Photo

The chancellor's momentous decision on September 4, 2015, to keep Germany's borders open to people fleeing wars in Iraq and Syria left a mark not only on European migration policies, but also arguably sparked a resurgence of the far-right in Germany. Credit: Reuters Photo

When tens of thousands of migrants streamed into Germany, putting the country's emergency response authorities under intense pressure, Merkel declared:

The large influx also deeply divided the European Union, with mostly former Eastern bloc nations firmly opposed to taking in refugees. With her extraordinary message to Donald Trump on his election as US president in November 2016, Merkel appeared to take the mantle of leader of the free world. Credit: AFP Photo

Merkel offered Trump her cooperation but only on the basis of democratic values -- an unheard of shot across the bow to Washington. That would start four years of fractious ties, and fans leapt on an image of Merkel and Trump at a stormy G7 summit in Canada as an illustration of how she was trying to keep the US leader on the straight and narrow. Credit: Reuters Photo

The picture showed