Memoirs From Mutti

Angela Merkel served as chancellor of Germany for four consecutive four-year terms, from 2005 to 2021.

- Angela Merkel

Only Helmut Kohl had a longer stint at the helm of a democratic Deutschland-and he was in power for a mere 10 days more than Mutti Merkel ("Mother Merkel"), as the country's first female chancellor came to be known. The nickname, conceived by her detractors as a somewhat sexist put-down, was embraced by her own supporters as an accolade in recognition of the stability and prudence that were the stocks-in-trade of this unflashy pastor's daughter who was raised in communist East Germany.

Her cautious solidity and centrist pragmatism made, inevitably, for dullness. And even though she governed in what were turbulent times-the 2008-09 financial crisis, the Arab Spring, Muslim migrants flooding Europe, the growth of Islamist terrorism, Russia's annexation of Crimea, the emergence of Xi Jinping, Brexit, Donald Trump's first election, and Covid-19-Ms. Merkel never herself set pulses racing as a politician.

And so it should come as no surprise that her memoir, "Freedom," is an achingly earnest account of her own extraordinary life, the excitement toned down at every opportunity by the dictates of her profound Protestant modesty. The book was written with Beate Baumann, her fiercely protective chief of staff, and the publisher deployed no fewer than eight translators to render it into English.