Merkel’s legacy The force that drove the head of Europe’s greatest power
As Maren Heinzerling crossed hands with the most powerful woman in the world, leaned backwards and started to spin her dance partner in a circle, she began to worry.
“What are you doing?” the retired railway engineer recalled thinking. “You are spinning around the room with Angela Merkel.” Heinzerling had to grip the chancellor’s hands tighter. “I realised I couldn’t let go or the chancellor would have careered across the hall and smashed into a wall.” The scene dates back to 17 May 2017, when Heinzerling, then 78, was invited to Merkel’s chancellory in Berlin to pick up an award for her volunteering work, teaching physics to refugee children.
Heinzerling had improvised their little dance number after Merkel, who has a PhD in quantum chemistry, had been too quick on an experiment the science teacher had devised for the cameras. “Then I remembered this other experiment,” Heinzerling recalled,
