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Post by pieter on Jul 16, 2019 16:10:19 GMT -7
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Post by pieter on Jul 16, 2019 16:13:43 GMT -7
Ursula von der Leyen Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen (About this soundlisten (help·info); née Albrecht, born 8 October 1958) is a German politician and the First Woman President of the European Commission. She had served as Minister of Defence of Germany from 2013 to 2019. A member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), she is the first woman to hold the office of German defence minister, and to become President of the European Commission.
She was born and raised in Brussels, where her father Ernst Albrecht was one of the first European civil servants from 1958, and was brought up bilingual in German and French; she is of German and American descent. She moved to Hanover in 1971, when her father entered politics to become Prime Minister of the state of Lower Saxony in 1976. As an economics student in London in the late 1970s, she lived under the name Rose Ladson, the family name of her American great-grandmother from Charleston, South Carolina. After graduating as a physician from the Hanover Medical School in 1987, she specialized in women's health. In 1986 she married fellow physician Heiko von der Leyen of the noble von der Leyen family of silk merchants. As a mother of seven children, she was a housewife during parts of the 1990s and lived for four years in Stanford, California, while her husband was on faculty at Stanford University, returning to Germany in 1996.
In the late 1990s she became involved in local politics in the Hanover region and she served as a cabinet minister in the state government of Lower Saxony from 2003 to 2005. In 2005, she joined the federal cabinet, first as Minister of Family Affairs and Youth from 2005 to 2009, then as Minister of Labour and Social Affairs from 2009 to 2013, before succeeding Thomas de Maizière as Minister of Defence in 2013. She announced her resignation as defence minister on 15 July 2019. She is the only minister to have served continuously in Angela Merkel's cabinet since she took office. She has previously been regarded as a main contender to succeed Merkel as Chancellor and as the favourite to become Secretary-General of NATO.
On 2 July 2019, von der Leyen was proposed by the European Council as the candidate for the office of President of the European Commission. She was elected by the European Parliament on 16 July, with a close majority.
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Post by Jaga on Jul 16, 2019 21:44:16 GMT -7
Pieter, thanks for introduction. I could understand her German easily, she speaks clearly... although for me she looks more Western European than Angela (who is from Eastern Germany).
The one problem I have with her - she seemed to be privileged all her life....
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Post by Jaga on Jul 17, 2019 22:11:35 GMT -7
Pieter, I just watched Polish news and saw Ursula. Apparently Polish nationalists also voted for her in spite of her being pro-environment.
I could not believe she has seven children! This is a new norm, mothers with many children are able to go back to professional life and succeed!
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