Spouses of politicians are often not devoid 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 media interviews and only occasionally appears in public with his wife. Sauer missed her inauguration in 2005 and drew the ire of the media by watching the event on TV at his Berlin University. A German newspaper once wrote that he was "invisible, like a molecule". In addition, his last name in translation means "angry" or "sour".
German frugality
In addition, he became famous for his frugality. For example, according to German media, he flew alone on a budget airline flight to Italy, where he and Merkel were vacationing, instead of paying a nominal fee to accompany her on a government plane.
Practical Listener
While his wife is constantly in the spotlight amid her battle with the Eurozone economic crisis, Sauer seems happy to remain anonymous outside of his circle.
"Thank you for your interest," he emailed back, declining an interview request. The government and spokesperson Angela Merkel also declined to comment.
Friends and colleagues say Sauer is misrepresented by the German media. People who know him do not describe him as a grump, but rather as a practical man with a dry sense of humor. According to them, Joachim Sauer (his full lineage can be traced back to a small mining town behind the Iron Curtain in the former East Germany, highlighting his closeness to the people) is a valuable listener for a wife doing one of the toughest jobs in Europe.
The couple love hiking. According to the famous climber Messner, with whom Joachim Sauer and Angela Merkel traveled on foot 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's very smart. This is the chancellor's ideal partner.
Joachim Sauer: biography
In the south of Germany, not far from Dresden, there is a small mining town Hosen. Joachim Sauer was born here on April 19, 1949. His parents are well-known local confectioner and insurance agent Richard Sauer, who died in 1972, and Elfriede, who lived until 1999. He has a twin sister and an older brother. A few months after the birth of Joachim, Hosen became part of East Germany and was separated from the rest of the world by the Iron Curtain.
Sauermet Merkel in 1981. She, a final-year physics student, was 27. He, a lecturer at the Berlin Academy of Sciences, was 32. Both had spouses. Angela's marriage to Ulrich Merkel, also a physicist, ended in divorce in 1982.
Joachim Sauer, whose children, Adrian and Daniel, were born in his previous marriage, separated from his chemist wife in 1983 and left the joint apartment. They divorced in 1985 after 16 years of marriage.
Merkel did not comment on the beginning of her relationship with her husband, but it caught the attention of the East German security service. According to the biography of the German leader, the Stasi noticed their frequent meetings during lunch breaks when both were married to others.
Phenomenal student
In the preface to her 1986 physics dissertation, Merkel thanked Sauer for his "critical remarks." Her future husband was a phenomenal student. In 1974, at the age of 25, he received a PhD in chemistry from Humboldt University with the highest marks and taught there until the Academy of Sciences moved to Berlin in 1977. His work was recognized in the West. From 1977 until the reunification of Germany, Joachim Sauer worked at the Academy of Sciences at the Institute of Physical Chemistry. Despite not being a member of the German Communist Party, he managed to make a career as a scientist and almost become a nomenclature 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 in1989. Reinhart Ahhlrichs, who headed the research team at the University of Karlsruhe where the scientist worked for some time, described him as one of the top 30 theoretical chemists in the world, just a rank below those who win the Nobel Prize.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Angela entered politics, and Joachim spent a year in San Diego, where he worked at the biochemistry institute BIOSYM Technologies, a company that developed software to help test the molecular structure of drugs. He returned to Humboldt in 1992 and specializes in zeolites, porous minerals that can be used in everything from nuclear fuel processing to pharmaceuticals.
Although he doesn't talk about life with Merkel, a professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin gave an interview to the university's newsletter in 2010 reflecting on the life of a scientist behind the Iron Curtain. According to him, he was once invited to the United States to give a lecture, but his superiors said that he could not do it because he was not a scientist who was allowed to travel to the West. So someone else went instead. Sauer felt uncomfortable.
It has always been a challenge to find the right balance to stand up to the Communist Party and not get in trouble. The trick was to still look into the eyes of your reflection in the mirror every morning, but not be thrown out of the university.
Love for Wagner
Joachim Sauer and Angela Merkellived together for over a decade before they formalized their relationship in 1998 under pressure from the church and some of its allies in Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union. Many considered it inappropriate for a conservative political leader to live with someone outside of marriage. Angela and Joachim signed without any ceremonies and witnesses at the regional registry office in Berlin. Even acquaintances and friends learned about it from the media.
Germany's "First Husband" is an ardent admirer of opera and shares his wife's love for Richard Wagner and long journeys. Messner says they are a surprising match given their busy schedules.
Merkel is Europe's main leader, but on the international stage she usually stands apart. Joachim Sauer accompanies her when protocol makes it inevitable, and he rarely allows himself to speak out in public.
When they appear together, sometimes Merkel seems to forget about her husband. In 2011, when she was receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom at the White House, she got out of her limousine and walked up a few steps until she stopped, as if remembering that she had forgotten Sauer, who was in a hurry to catch up with her.
The Phantom of the Opera
While other "first spouses" such as Michelle Obama occasionally speak out on hot issues or support favorite topics, Merkel's husband 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 inmicrophone,” he growled into the camera on the red carpet at the Bayreuth Opera Festival in 2005, when his wife was still leader of the opposition.
A year or two after Merkel came to power, German journalists gave up trying to interview an unapproachable man they called "The Phantom of the Opera".
Principled Silent Man
Sauer's obscurity means 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 stood.
By persistent refusal to open up, he earned the respect of some members of the German press.
According to political commentator Hugo Müller-Fogg of the popular newspaper Bild, journalists expected that if they continued to insist on their point, he would sooner or later give up. But Joachim Sauer sticks to his principles, and there's something to admire about that.
After Müller-Fogg attacked him for missing Merkel's inauguration, the chancellor answered the journalist personally. She said that the journalist should not worry about her husband, because he would accompany her to all events, when his absence could cause a diplomatic incident. And he did it. For a society as transparent as Germany, it is indeed quite remarkable that Sauer managed to endure for so long.
Important Spotter
Merkel has in the past described her conversations with her husband as "vital" and called him "verya good adviser.”
She once told the German celebrity magazine Bunte that her husband and she are each busy with their own work: she is not a housewife and he is not a housewife.
When Joachim Sauer sits down to breakfast with her and reads the papers on the weekends, he poses political questions to her like any ordinary citizen. He does not participate in political intrigues or machinations in Berlin and is not interested in them. According to a Merkel employee, she said several times after coming to work that her husband did not understand what the government was doing, after which a discussion began. But he does not actively influence politics. For her, her husband is a means of checking the real state of affairs.
According to Merkel's close aide, Sauer is definitely an important "correct 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 he thinks.
Noise impact
And he really says what he thinks. In August 2001, Sauer caused a stir in Berlin by filing a formal complaint about noise from an open-air theater performance in front of his Berlin apartment. He faxed a complaint to the authorities about the "noise exposure" in the evening. This was confirmed by Adrienne Geler, a municipal official who then intervened in the summer production of Heinrich von Kleist's tragicomedy Amphitryon. The performance was 8 dB above the legal noise limit of 60 dB. Geler spent days calling various city agencies to find a way to close the show. According to her,living in the center of Germany's largest city and complaining about a slight excess of noise at 8:30 p.m., as a result of which the theater production was stopped, is grotesque. “If he wants peace and quiet, like in a forest, let him move to the forest,” that was her resume. The controversy made headlines in Berlin newspapers amid speculation that political influence may have been used to close the show. Merkel did not comment on the incident.
Apartment in Berlin is located in an old building next to the Pergamon Museum. Security guards live in adjoining apartments, and curious passers-by often gather at the windows. In addition, the couple has a house in Mecklenburg, where they sometimes go to relax, gardening, wandering through the meadows and swimming in forest ponds.
German quantum chemist
In the department of chemistry at the Humboldt University of Berlin, colleagues and students were instructed not to talk about Sauer. According to Sven, a 29-year-old student who has known the professor for 5 years, he just wants to be recognized as a scientist, not as Merkel's husband.
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 subtle and abstruse that only a few people could understand it. She wasn't even funny. But some laughed - more out of politeness.
