Chancellor Angela Merkel has led her Christian Democrats to victory in two national elections, earned a doctorate in quantum chemistry and, as a teenager, won a Russian language competition.
One of those, it turns out, was a source of great consternation among Communist party officials.
The chancellor's former Russian language teacher told Cicero magazine in an interview published Thursday that the 14-year-old Merkel's win at the language competition was almost too good for the
tastes of party officials, who would have preferred to see the win go to a student from a family more closely linked to the party.
Merkel is the daughter of a pastor. Communist party ideology would have preferred the victor be from a farming or working class family.
Thus, Merkel's 1969 wins in a series of East German Russian language competitions - first in school and then later at the national level - triggered annoyance among the party faithful at a
party meeting, said teacher Erika Benn.
"I cannot help it if she is that good," Benn said she told an angry school board. The board's anger even lead Benn to tears, she said.
The 58-year-Merkel grew up in the East German town of Templin after her family moved to the former Communist state in 1954 from Hamburg so her father could take up a post in a local Protestant
church.
A chemist by training, Merkel entered active political life as a member of the conservative Christian Democrat Union following the breaching of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the consequent implosion of East Germany.