BERLIN — Just when it looked like Angela Merkel was going to ride quietly into the sunset, fate intervened.

Two weeks ago, the German leader’s biggest worry was finding a successor and a life after politics. Now she finds herself in the center of what many consider the most serious global crisis since World War II.

“The coronavirus pandemic is a human tragedy of potentially biblical proportions,” former European Central Bank President Mario Draghi warned this week.

For better or worse, Merkel is the only European leader with either the experience or stature to take charge. The European Union’s current crop of chieftains — Council President Charles Michel, who spent one term as Belgian prime minister, and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, whose spotty reputation as a German minister precedes her — are both untested and unknown to most Europeans. The European Central Bank, a rock of stability when Draghi was in charge, has developed decidedly shakier legs under Christine Lagarde, his successor.

That leaves Merkel — assuming she doesn’t have coronavirus (she was exposed to the virus by a doctor a week ago, but the first two tests she took were negative).

Overcoming the economic fallout of the pandemic will depend on factors well beyond Germany’s control.

For the woman who steered Europe through the financial panic that nearly brought down the euro and the refugee crisis of 2015, this might seem like familiar territory.

It’s not. This time around, the scope of the crisis and the consequences of failure are much greater than anything Merkel has ever dealt with.

The main challenge Merkel faced both during Europe’s debt crisis and the refugee influx was in convincing her own citizenry of the necessity for action — that is, to save the euro by bailing out Greece & Co. and to accept huge numbers of refugees. In other words, the central question was one of German will. There was never any doubt that Germany could shoulder the burdens or that it would cripple its economy by doing so; the only real unknown was whether Germans would agree.

Overcoming the economic fallout of the pandemic, however, will depend on factors well beyond Germany’s control. Not only has the pandemic paralyzed Europe’s economy, Germany’s biggest export markets are also effectively shuttered for the foreseeable future.

This week, Merkel’s government mobilized a staggering package of aid measures — a combination of social subsidies, loans and guarantees — worth more than €1 trillion.

In relative terms, the German package exceeds even the dimensions of the $2 trillion bill approved by the U.S. Congress this week.

Though the sums at play are dizzying, the strategy behind them couldn’t be more straightforward: to compensate for the sharp drop in economic output — the revenue, profit and wages that grease the economy in normal times.

Thing is, countries can’t idle their economies and borrow forever. They simply can’t afford to. At some point — as Donald Trump argued this week — the cure risks becoming worse than the disease. At least in economic terms.

No one knows when Germany will reach the point of having to decide between its economic survival and the lives of those most susceptible to coronavirus. Chances are that Merkel will have to make such a call in the coming weeks, however.

In Europe, it’s up to each individual country to decide if and when to stop listening to the epidemiologists and public health officials arguing for extended lockdowns to “flatten the curve” of the infected. Yet given Merkel’s political influence and the importance of Germany’s economy to the rest of Europe, many are likely to follow her lead.

The German chancellor will likely face an equally tough — if less fraught in moral terms — choice on Europe in the coming weeks.

With southern Europe’s economy falling off a cliff amid the crisis, countries from Italy to Spain to Greece face economic ruin. Unlike Germany, they can’t afford to plug the holes the crisis has created in their economies with massive borrowing.

This week a group of nine European leaders, led by France, Spain and Italy, called for the issuance of common eurozone debt, so-called “corona bonds,” to combat the crisis.

Though the letter went to Brussels, it was intended for Berlin.

In effect, the leaders’ proposal would require Germany to assume liability for the debt of all other eurozone members, something anathema to most Germans.

Merkel has been here before. During the eurozone crisis, she faced repeated calls to introduce “eurobonds” in order to restore investor confidence in the creditworthiness of countries such as Greece.

Merkel, facing fierce opposition to the idea among her own conservatives, refused to even consider such a step.

Then, as now, opponents of the idea argued that a common debt instrument would leave Germany on the hook for the profligate spending of its neighbors.

Yet many economists consider the eurozone’s lack of common lending power to be the fatal flaw in the currency union’s architecture, exposing it to shocks such as the current one. If Italy and Spain, the eurozone’s third and fourth largest economies, fall into an economic depression in the wake of the coronavirus crisis — a distinct possibility — the eurozone itself would be in jeopardy. For now, Berlin is relying on the ECB to step into the breach by buying countries’ bonds, a controversial policy that puts what is ultimately a political decision in the hands of the central bank.

So far, Merkel’s government has shown no signs of softening its stance on the debt question.

During a videoconference of EU leaders on Thursday, Merkel again poured cold water on the idea. She told reporters she would prefer that countries rely on the EU’s bailout fund, which she described as “the instrument of choice for me.” But with a lending capacity of just €500 billion, the fund might not have the necessary firepower to handle what lies in store.

German Economy Minister Peter Altmaier dismissed the latest calls for mutualizing eurozone debt this week as a “phantom debate.”

As southern Europe’s economic crisis worsens, however, the demand is becoming more real by the hour.

“This would be the proper occasion to introduce eurobonds, directly connected to the coronavirus crisis,” former ECB Vice President Vítor Constâncio said.

A common criticism of Merkel’s handling of the eurozone crisis is that her strategy addressed the short-term crisis, not the currency’s underlying flaws.

That failure, her critics say, robbed her of a true European legacy.

While Merkel is revered by many on the center left outside of Germany, in particular in the U.S. and U.K., that’s mainly because they appreciate her for what she’s not: loud, bombastic or obnoxious.

The coronavirus crisis presents the German leader, whose term ends next year, with a final opportunity to push through the elusive “deeper European integration” most observers say is necessary to preserve both the euro and the European Union in the long term.

Over her long tenure as chancellor, Merkel has repeated time and again that Germany’s destiny lies in Europe. Now’s her chance to prove it.