Angela Merkel was born in Hamburg, West Germany in 1954. His father was an official in the church. Merkel grew up on the outskirts of Templin, a cobblestones town in the pine forests of Brandenburg, north of Berlin.The neighborhood where she lived was full of handicapped people, which had an important impact on her future life, because she learned to treat them in a very normal way. When she was five years old, she could barely walk downhill without falling. In her teen-age, she was not interested in clothes, she always wore colorless clothes and she had an "impossible" haircut. But she was very smart and motivated. When she was in her eighth-grade, she joined the Russian Club and participated in East Germany's Russian-language Olympiad. She had a perfect performance then. Merkel studied physics at Leipzig University and earn a doctorate in quantum chemistry in Berlin and she was active in the Free German Youth. In 1989, she got a chance to participate in democratic politics. In 2005, she campaigned for Chancellor.