BERLIN — She is a gynecologist with seven children who knows just about everything about fighter jets. She says grace before dinner and believes in gay adoption. She loves the United States and dreams of a United States of Europe someday.

Some feminists are annoyed by her piety. Most conservatives are annoyed by her feminism.

“That woman,” they sigh.

That woman is Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s defense minister and a longtime ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who this week was unexpectedly nominated as the next president of the European Commission, the European Union’s powerful executive body.

If confirmed by the European Parliament later this month, she will be the first woman to hold the top job in the 28-nation bloc. For now, the outcome of that vote has been clouded by more than the usual grumblings about the lack of transparency in the bargaining that produced her nomination.