Merkel's musings on Trump, Ukraine and her childhood

Berlin: German newspaper Die Zeit has published a series of excerpts from "Freedom", the eagerly anticipated memoir by former German chancellor Angela Merkel.

The 736-page book, co-written by Merkel and her longtime political adviser Beate Baumann, is due to be published simultaneously in 30 languages on Tuesday.

Here are some of the insights provided by Die Zeit into Merkel's account of her life before politics and her 16 years in power between 2005 and 2021.

On her childhood

Growing up in the former East Germany was "a constant life on the edge", Merkel said in the excerpts published by Die Zeit.

"No matter how carefree a day began, everything could change in a matter of seconds and your existence could be threatened if political boundaries were crossed," she wrote.

Finding out where those red lines were was "the art of living".

Merkel's parents "did everything they could to create a safe space", letting her run free outside and encouraging conversation at home.

But encounters with the Socialist "dictatorship", such as the collectivisation of farmland and harassment of artists, made their mark on the young Merkel.

At university, where she studied physics, Merkel said she had to endure "absurd" lessons on the state's Communist ideology.

On one occasion, Merkel was denounced by another student for not paying attention to a lecture on Marxism-Leninism and working instead on scientific problem sets.

She was thrown out of the class and exited the hall in a state of shock.

"When I stood outside, I noticed that my knees were shaking... I will never forget that walk," she recalled.

On Russia and Ukraine

In the book, Merkel defends her much-criticised policy of maintaining close ties with Russia and her decision to block Ukraine and Georgia from joining NATO in 2008.

"I understood (their) desire... to become members of NATO as quickly as possible, because they wanted to be part of the Western community after the end of the Cold War," she said.

NATO had, however, to consider the effect of each potential new member on its own "security, stability and ability to function", she said.

"The admission of a new member should not only bring (the member) more security, but also NATO."

After the summit in Bucharest, Merkel flew home with the feeling that "we in NATO had no common strategy for dealing with Russia", she said.

Many Central and Eastern European countries "seemed to wish that the country would simply disappear, that it didn't exist", she said.

"I could hardly blame them, as they had suffered under Soviet rule for a long time... But Russia, with its nuclear arsenal, did exist. It was and is geopolitically indispensable," she said.

On Donald Trump

When Merkel first met US President-elect Donald Trump in March 2017 after he was elected to his first term in the White House, the US leader "asked me a series of questions", Merkel said.

Trump wanted to know about "my East German background and my relationship with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. He was clearly very fascinated by the Russian president," she said.

"In the years that followed, I had the impression that he was captivated by politicians with autocratic and dictatorial tendencies."

Merkel said that after the meeting, in which Trump repeated many of the criticisms he had made of Germany during his election campaign, she was left with "a bad feeling".

"He claimed that I had ruined Germany by taking in so many refugees in 2015 and 2016, accused us of spending too little on defence and criticised us for unfair trade practices," Merkel said.

The sight of many German cars on the streets of New York in particular had been "a thorn in his side", she said.

"We were talking on two different levels -- Trump on the emotional level, me on the factual level. When he did pay attention to my arguments, it was mostly just to turn them into new accusations," she said.