Merkel mystery as husband holidays without chancellor

WHERE is Angela Merkel? The world’s most powerful woman appears to have pulled off something of a disappearing act, and Germans have been wondering where their chancellor has been in recent days.

It is not that Mrs Merkel has missed any official engagements; she is on holiday, as she always is at this time of year, and Olaf Scholz, the vice-chancellor, is chairing the cabinet in her absence.

It’s just that nobody seems to know where Mrs Merkel is or how she is spending her time off. She is not on her usual walking holiday in the Italian Alps, though her husband, Joachim Sauer, is there.

The situation has set off whisperings about trouble in Mrs Merkel’s marriage – but she was seen with her husband on Tuesday night in Munich, at a fivehour production of the opera Parsifal.

A few days after her holiday began last week, she held talks in Berlin with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, and Valery Gerasimov, one of the key Russian generals in Syria, who is under EU sanctions for his role in the Ukraine conflict.

Her Berlin office refuses to divulge her whereabouts, saying it does not comment on her private arrangements.