Angela Merkel

At the event, Mrs Merkel urged the audience to "always see the world through the eyes of others".

The ceremonial tattoo, or Grosser Zapfenstreich, is now a tradition for departing political figures.

And after her 16 years as leader, the ceremony comes with a marching band and torchlight procession.

But what set German tongues wagging was the music she chose.

Mrs Merkel is a passionate music lover, but in her words "mostly classical music", and she's a regular visitor to the Bayreuth Festival, which showcases the work of composer Richard Wagner.

Mrs Merkel, 64, was visibly struggling as she stood next to Volodymyr Zelensky while a military band played the two countries' anthems in the midday sun.

The temperatures in the German capital were approaching 30C (86F) at the time.

Mrs Merkel said she was dehydrated. "I've drunk at least three glasses of water and so I'm doing very well now."

The chancellor was answering a question about her wellbeing at a joint news conference with President Zelensky.

Meanwhile, Mr Zelensky, a comedian-turned-president, said that he would have come to the rescue if needed.

Her conservative CDU/CSU bloc has seen its worst result in almost 70 years but will remain the largest in parliament.

Its current coalition partner, the social democratic SPD, says it will go into opposition after historic losses.

The nationalist AfD has won its first seats and is set to be the third party, a result that sparked some protests.

Dozens of demonstrators have gathered outside the right-wing, anti-Islam party's headquarters in Berlin, some with placards saying "Refugees are welcome".

Protests have also been held in Frankfurt and Cologne.

The election will also bring a far-right party into Germany's parliament for the first time in more than half a century.

Mrs Merkel's conservative CDU/CSU alliance won 32.5 percent of the vote, making them the largest parliamentary group, an exit poll for broadcaster ARD indicated. However, that was down from 41.5 per cent in the last election, in 2013.

Support for the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), currently junior partners in a so-called "grand coalition" with Mrs Merkel, slumped to 20 percent - a new post-war low. The SPD ruled out a re-run of that tie-up.

Activists say police in the republic have arrested and tortured dozens of people in an anti-gay crackdown.

Mrs Merkel raised the issue during her first visit to Russia since 2015, which saw her hold talks with Mr Putin at his summer residence in Sochi.

Relations between the two nations have been strained over Syria and Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine.

He said Mrs Merkel was by far Europe's most important leader, and that the EU had become a vehicle for Germany.

Mr Trump was giving details of his foreign policy goals in an interview with British and German newspapers.

He told The Times and Bild his priority was to create fairer trade deals for the US and have strong borders.

He said the US had to address its trade deficit with the rest of the world, particularly with China.

The emphasis for his administration should be smart trade, rather than free trade, he said.

In 11 years as the leader of Germany, her speeches are usually sobering analyses of thorny political and economic dilemmas, using only her signature diamond-shaped hand gesture to punctuate her points.

The German chancellor said the secrecy around the algorithms used by online platforms threatened open debate.

Without greater scrutiny, many people could get a distorted or censored view of events, she said.

Google and Facebook told German paper Der Spiegel they gave the public a lot of information about how they worked.

Mrs Merkel's call for action follows work by German politicians to investigate how the software works.

'Informed citizens'

The Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) party took about 21% of the vote behind the centre-left SPD's 30%.

The German chancellor's CDU was backed by only about 19% of those who voted, according to the partial results.

The vote was seen as a key test before German parliamentary elections in 2017.

Before the vote in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, in the former East Germany, all of Germany's other parties ruled out forming a governing coalition with the AfD.

However, the party's strong showing could weaken Mrs Merkel ahead of the national elections next

The then-prime minister called the German leader days before the EU referendum, as opinion polls seemed to show voters moving to the Leave camp.

But he later abandoned the idea of getting her and other EU leaders to make a statement granting concessions.

No 10 decided it could be portrayed by Vote Leave as a sign of weakness.

Newsnight has learned that Mr Cameron telephoned the German chancellor to ask whether she would be willing to issue a statement with fellow EU leaders granting the UK concessions on free movement.