How do you experience the strictly guarded state visit of your former trustee?

Not dramatically, I see her from time to time. For example, a few years ago you in Berlin made time for the whole day to celebrate Helmut Schwarz’s 70th birthday and Rudolf Zahradník’s 85th birthday (Chemists and friends of Merkel – editor’s note). I had the opportunity to stay there with her for the whole half day. And, for example, she came to Prague almost incognito to celebrate Rudolf Zahradník’s 80th birthday. She returned from a state visit to Spain and stopped in Prague. Others from the old party are seeing her. For example, Professor Josef Michl was invited by her husband to a cottage in the mountains in the autumn. And Angela was a housewife there, taking care of them and cooking them.

What do you say to the security measures that accompany her visit?

They seem a little hair-raising. I’m not a security expert and I know what the world looks like today and what’s going on. They probably have a reason for that. But I’m sorry, because I know she wanted to visit this institute. Unfortunately, this is not possible because it violates security rules. we have not finished. There are employees of the construction company, who still have to disappear on the site during their visit. So we wanted her to at least go to the eighth floor of the next building and see from above how we renovated the institute when I can no longer look where she worked. But even security experts wouldn’t allow it, because it would be a good object for snipers upstairs.

The German Chancellor now faces frequent criticism for her attitudes, especially to the refugee crisis. How is her doing?

On the one hand, I understand her, on the other, I’m embarrassed. With the number of immigrants rolling into Europe, it is very clear that there will be a certain percentage of radicals, extremists, dangerous people among them. They can stay here for decades, for example, before they come up with anything. I don’t mind the coexistence of cultures or immigrants at all, I myself have more foreigners in the laboratory than people from the Czech Republic. But somewhere in the back of my head, I’m afraid that one day it won’t turn out well. I also see it in the Turks, who are in Germany. There are a lot of Turks in Frankfurt, where I was still a Humboldt Fellow, and I have a theory that the third generation is frustrated and radical.

You said your opinion Angela Merkel?

I’d like to talk to her about it, but I’m afraid we’ll have ten-fifteen minutes with Mr. Zahradnik to discuss the whole debate, if at all. And such a discussion takes half a day or a day to explain what I think and to hear her views. There is a difference between what a politician presents publicly and what his own opinion is, it is not the set itself.

Angela needed a computer

How did the Chancellor get to the Prague Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry in the early 1980s? It is said that her husband, quantum chemist Joachim Sauer, arranged an internship there.

Angela was finishing her doctorate and needed a computer. At that time, there were no computers in the GDR, and the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry had a new IBM computer. It occupied the entire room and had less memory than today’s flash drives, but at the time it was the very advanced technology Angela needed for her job. Through Joachim, who was not yet her husband, she turned to Rudolf Zahradník if she could come to Prague. And he asked me if I would pay attention. One fine day she arrived and I picked her up and took her to accommodation in Mazanka. I found that he had good equipment at the time of working with a computer – large cabling for punched labels, tapes, dumps and things like that. And we started working.

In the end, your collaboration resulted in several joint publications.

Yes, by the way, here are some of the manuscripts I want to take with me to the meeting. I promised to show her I still had the originals. I wrote this on my first personal computer, which didn’t do much. It is printed on an inkjet printer. Pictures and graphs were drawn by hand, graphics basically do not exist. When a mistake was made, it was killed. One day I would like to keep these manuscripts in the archives of the institute, so I would like them to be signed by both Angela Merkel and Rudolf Zahradník.

What exactly do they do? What was Angela Merkel’s contribution to the scientific world?

We did one of the first theoretical studies of the elementary reaction today, which probably wouldn’t appeal to anyone today, but then it was methodically, so chemically quite good, so we were only able to explain the mechanism of the reaction and calculate the rate constants of the reaction. The work has been relatively quoted. Even three years ago, it was the most downloaded work of the American Chemical Society in a year. Of which I would be very happy to know, of course, that people withdrew it because of Angela Merkel’s name on a scientific article, and because they would still be celebrating this article today.

How do you remember working with her?

She was like most Germans – careful, hardworking, reliable. It was a never-ending endeavor. Just like letting the German footballers breathe a little five minutes before the end of the match, because you think that a 3-0 victory won’t miss you anymore, but they will go crazy and you can easily lose. She worked very nicely. I also had a sense of humor, she was a normal girl. In addition to that work, there were a lot of other things we did.

For example, what?

She learned to cook dumplings, she learned Czech. She had a good base in Russian because she was from the GDR, Russian was compulsory there, so Czech did not cause her such problems. Not that she spoke very fluently, but when she needed to, she could make a deal.

Do you perceive that she was more of a hard worker or was she really talented?

She was talented, for sure. She knew a lot of things, apart from chemistry, she had a decent physical basis, because she came from a laboratory from Professor Lutz Zülicke, where physicists worked. She could think of problems and had a goal as she solved them. The work with her was joyful, it wasn’t even training, but rather cooperation.

Sewing machine from the GDR

What was the institute like when Angela Merkel worked at it?

This was precisely under the direction of Dr. Šebesta, politics does not exist here, there was practically no political bullying and everything took place at a professional level. The only thing we had limits in was sometimes the equipment. There were no currencies, but many things were made here with the help of very skilled people in development workshops. And there was a lack of freer travel after conferences. But at the time I was traveling, I was relatively young, I didn’t have one, and I was a solo soldier, so I had nothing new to present at the conference five times a year.

So once every two years I could go to the conference, that was enough for me. For Angela, it was necessary to leave the GDR, to be at a conference in the West, was much more complicated than to leave Czechoslovakia. For example, I spent a year as a postdoctoral student in America with Professor Roald Hoffmann, a Nobel laureate in chemistry. This is something that was out of the question for the people of the GDR.

She met Angela Merkel with the professor Antonín Holýwhich brought the institute such fame as well as license agreements for its patents, which earn the institute more than a billion a year?

Definitely yes, she worked there at the same time as him. But he probably won’t remember that.

He allegedly imported your wife from a GDR sewing machine.

Yes, she brought more things from the GDR, she brought back Czech glass, for example. But perhaps the most curious was when sewing machines and my wife needed her in the Czech Republic. Angela bought it in the GDR and brought it here. When they checked at the border and asked her what she needed as a scientist, she said she needed to rest after work.

She also reportedly met her cousin, who fled to the west, near you in Poděbrady.

Yes, she was there several times. We went to dinner or had a date with Joachim when they went to see Kutná Hora. She came to see me if they could meet Cousin, an English cousin and cousin. I had in my head that he was a cousin, so we did chess to clear two rooms, and then Angela came with the girl. At first I looked blankly and then I realized it was my fault.

We had a nice evening. They stayed there for a few days, they made trips from Poděbrady, her cousin brought her a fur coat. And most of all, they had fun because they saw each other after a long time. Her cousin lived in the west, in Hamburg, she was in Berlin and there was an iron curtain between them, so the point of contact was Prague and Podebrady. And in Prague they didn’t want to risk it.

Congratulations to the Minister

How did you react to her entry into politics?

I have a memory from when I was in Frankfurt in 1991, when the ministry was first appointed Kohlny government. When we talked, she never tended to talk about politics or wanting to do it. All I knew was that she was a member of a youth organization in Berlin, but it was nothing special at the time.

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One day I came home from university and went to cook something. I turned on the television and suddenly heard that someone named Angela Merkel had been appointed to Kohl’s government. I thought it was probably a coincidence, but I went from the stove to watch TV and saw Angela shaking hands with the German president. I immediately went to find the ministry’s address at Central Station, because there were all the lists. I wrote her a congratulations and immediately received a thank you.

And when she was elected Chancellor?

When Kohl finished, one was to wait, she was his young lady. The situation called for a lady from the main political party and the GDR to get to the Head of Germany. I would say that she had the qualities I observed as a scientist as a politician. It is incomprehensible to me that she went into politics, I really had no idea that she has such talents and will do something. But I would say that she changed the world a lot to her image. Or maybe a picture of your surroundings.