Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen is a German politician and the President of the European Commission since 1 December 2019. She served in the federal government of Germany from 2005 to 2019, as the Federal Minister of Defence, in Angela Merkel’s Cabinet. She is a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and its EU counterpart, the European People’s Party. Von der Leyan is included in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.
About Ursula von der Leyen in brief
Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen (; born 8 October 1958) is a German politician and the President of the European Commission since 1 December 2019. She served in the federal government of Germany from 2005 to 2019, as the Federal Minister of Defence, in Angela Merkel’s Cabinet. She is a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union and its EU counterpart, the European People’s Party. Von der Leyan is included in Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020. Her father Ernst Albrecht was one of the first European civil servants. She was born and raised in Brussels to German parents; she was brought up bilingually in German and French. In the family, she has been known since childhood as Röschen, a diminutive of Rose. The family was in a personal union with the United Kingdom since the 17th century, and had been doctors, jurists and civil servants since the 18th century. Her great-grandfather Alexander Albrechts moved to Bremen in the 19th century where he became wealthy cotton merchant. Her mother was a daughter of a cotton plantation owner who belonged to the Knoopno family of one of Germany’s most successful entrepreneurs of the late 1800s and early 1900s. She married fellow physician Heiko von der Leyen in 1986; they have seven children. She lived for four years in Stanford, California, while her husband was on faculty at Stanford University, returning to Germany in 1996.
She became involved in local politics in the Hanover region in the late 1990s, 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, then Minister of Labour and Social Affairs from 2009 to 2013, and finally as Minister Minister of Defence from 2013 to 2019. When she left office she was the only minister to have served continuously in Angela Merkel’s cabinet since Merkel became Chancellor. She has previously been regarded as a leading contender to succeed Merkel as Chancellor and as the favourite to become Secretary-General of NATO. She was elected by the European Parliament on 16 July; she took office on 1 December, becoming the first woman in such role. Her family was among the hübsche families of the Electorate of Hanover and Kingdom of Bremen, and her great-great-grandmother was from Charleston, South Carolina, where she had a family connection to the American cotton plantation. Her grandfather was a cotton merchant who owned a plantation in the southern United States. Her grandfather was a Baron Ludwig Kopno, a daughter of the most successful 19th century Russian empire and one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the Hungarian Consul novels of 19th centuries. Her grandmother was a daughter of Baron Ludwig Kopno.
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