One Year in Office

Merkel came to power last November 22 after a messy, inconclusive election eventually produced a negotiated compromise -- she would rule over the unusual combination of her conservative Christian Democrats and the left-leaning Social Democrats of her predecessor Gerhard Schröder.

Critics say she has failed to show Schröder's leadership qualities, while Merkel's supporters say the absence of his flamboyant political showmanship is her strength.

"Her style is totally different from Gerhard Schröder and that is something she has kept. Where he made a big show of things, her style is to do the opposite," her biographer Gerd Langguth told news agency AFP.

"She just comes into the room and speaks. With Schröder everything was much more pompous. I think Germans like this sort of modesty," he said.

Economic upswing

As Germany's first woman leader, Merkel has led the so-called "grand coalition" to major policy decisions, reforming the funding of the healthcare system and raising the retirement age while tinkering with the tax system.

Unemployment, which bubbled ominously around the five-million mark before the election, fell in October to its lowest level in four years at around four million -- and debt is down too.

But a panel of company bosses polled by the Allensbach research institute found that 55 percent of them believed the economic recovery had nothing to do with the work of the government.

"After five lean years, Germany is for once enjoying the sweet side of the business cycle. It won't last forever," said Bank of America analyst Holger Schmieding.

Worse, he suggested, is that "the cyclical upswing has sapped the appetite in Berlin for tackling the really unpopular issues."

Foreign policy forte

While the infighting between right and left within her government has restricted her room to manoeuvre at home, Merkel has been able to express herself in the field of foreign policy.

"On the domestic scene, she is a bit confined by her role as a mediator, which makes international politics more attractive for her," said Josef Janning of the Bertelsmann Foundation.

The US-German relationship was severely strained by Schröder's outspoken opposition to the Iraq war, but Merkel has made it work again and she was instrumental in ensuring Germany leads the naval component of the peacekeeping force after the Lebanon-Israel war.

Her surprisingly high profile abroad saw the chancellor -- a pastor's daughter from former East Germany -- voted the world's most powerful woman by Forbes magazine.

Yet Merkel has enjoyed a year of two halves -- riding a wave of popularity in the first six months, almost drowning in the cross-party bickering over the healthcare reforms in the second.

Surveys now show only a third of the country supports her conservatives, their lowest score since 2000.

And with Germany set to take over the presidency of the Group of Eight most industrialized nations and the European Union in January, Merkel will find dangers lurking around every corner.