Berlin, Jul. 16, (dpa/GNA) – German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has honoured former chancellor Angela Merkel as a “role model and a hallmark of our democracy” ahead of her 70th birthday.

“The special thing about this anniversary is that your 70 years of life can be divided into exactly two halves. The first 35 years until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the second 35 years in the freedom you longed for,” Steinmeier wrote in a birthday message.

In the second 35 years, Merkel had decisively shaped the path of a united Germany as chancellor, he said.

Merkel was chancellor for 16 years, from 2005 to 2021, and was the first woman to hold the job. She was also the first chancellor to have been raised in East Germany.

She celebrates her 70th birthday on Wednesday.

“It was always important to you to emphasize the value of freedom and the value of an enlightened society,” wrote the president. “Your arguments were so convincing because you knew all the better from your own experience the inestimable value of life in a liberal democracy.”

Steinmeier served as foreign minister twice under Merkel – from 2005 to 2009 and then again from 2013 to 2017.

“I personally remember not only the tensions and strains of night-long negotiations that you took on with sheer boundless perseverance and an unshakeable sense of duty, but also your composure, your humour and quite simply your humanity,” Steinmeier continued.

GNA