Angela Merkel: A career in pictures Published duration 29 October 2018

Angela Merkel has announced she is stepping down as German chancellor in 2021, bringing an end to a political career which, by that point, will have spanned more than three decades.

It is a career documented in pictures at every turn: from visiting fishermen during her earliest campaigns, to talks at the White House, and everything in between.

Here, we have collected just a few from the thousands capturing the woman who has been at the helm of Germany for so many years.

image copyright AFP image caption Summer 1989: Mrs Merkel (pictured far right) with Malgorzata Jeziorska and future husband Joachim Sauer at a university summer school for chemistry in Poland

image copyright Getty Images image caption November 1990: By the next year, she was campaigning in the first German federal election to be held since the country was reunified

image copyright Getty Images image caption January 1994: Mrs Merkel was made minister for the environment in 1994 - which appears to have meant showing off how you recycle wrapping paper

image copyright Getty Images image caption March 1995: Mrs Merkel laughs with fellow minister Horst Seehofer, during a cabinet meeting

image copyright Getty Images image caption March 2000: Mrs Merkel was chosen to lead the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) in 2000

image copyright Getty Images image caption July 2005: Five years later, she was back on the campaign trail (pictured) - which would lead to her election as Germany's first female chancellor

image copyright AFP image caption June 2007: Despite it being the 21st Century, politics is still dominated by men, so Mrs Merkel - here with Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, US President George W Bush, Russian President Vladimir Putin and British Prime Minister Tony Blair - was often the lone female face

image copyright Reuters image caption April 2009: Mrs Merkel became a symbol of fiscal austerity in the years which followed the financial crash

image copyright Getty Images image caption April 2011: Hillary Clinton, then US secretary of state, and Mrs Merkel in Berlin

image copyright Getty Images image caption June 2015: Mrs Merkel with then-President Barack Obama, after a G7 summit session in southern Germany. "You have been a trusted partner throughout my entire presidency - longer than any world leader," the US leader told her a year later.

image copyright AFP image caption September 2015: The chancellor's decision to open Germany's borders to refugees in 2015 divided the country. Pictured: Refugees making their way through Hungary

image copyright Getty Images image caption April 2018: It also put her on a collision course with US President Donald Trump

image copyright Reuters image caption October 2018: Mrs Merkel tells the world she won't be standing for re-election

All pictures AFP or Getty Images