I never underestimated myself. And I never saw anything wrong with ambition.

It seems to me that the fact that I am a woman is a bigger issue than the fact that I'm from the East. For me it isn't really important. I've only ever known myself as a woman.

Globalization - and I think we share this conviction - is that globalization needs to be shaped politically, it needs to be given a human face, but we cannot allow to fall back into plagued globalization times.

The people in East Germany have lived through so many changes in the last 15 years like never before in the country, and they did this often with great enthusiasm. But in the West we also have a high degree of transformations.

Belong purportedly to certain groups say, "We are the people and not the others." That is something that we cannot allow to happen. That is something that I think at the time in the GDR - at the time when we had this in the GDR, where the people stood in the street and said, "We are the people," that is something that filled me with great joy.

I'm a person who acknowledges reality. I don't get up every morning and ask myself: What would I do differently if I were chancellor in a black-and-yellow (Christian Democrat and Free Democrat) coalition? The SPD (Social Democratic Party) and the (Christian Democrat and Christian Social) Union stand to weaken their own positions if they don't make this coalition a success. And we both want success.

The land of unlimited opportunity was for me, for a long time, impossible to reach. The wall, barbed wire and the order to shoot at those who tried to leave limited my access to the free world.