The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has fractured her pelvis during a skiing holiday in Switzerland, forcing her to cancel several meetings and trips scheduled over the next three weeks.

Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said on Monday the chancellor had fallen while cross-country skiing in Engadin near St Moritz in the Swiss Alps, suffering severe bruising and a "partial fracture of the left interior pelvic ring".

Merkel at first thought she had just suffered bruising, and only realised the extent of her injuries after seeing a doctor upon her return to Berlin. A full recovery will require lots of resting and may take up to six weeks, medical experts said.

Seibert told reporters Merkel was walking with the help of crutches and would need to cancel a number of official appointments but was planning to attend Wednesday's cabinet meeting in person. The meeting is the first gathering of all ministers in the new "grand coalition" cabinet made up of Merkel's Christian Democratic party and the Social Democratic party.

Merkel had originally planned to visit Poland this Wednesday and receive the new prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel on Thursday this week. Both appointments have been cancelled, as well as a meeting with the president of the German employers' association on Friday.

In what seemed to be an allusion to the debate over Formula One champion Michael Schumacher's much more severe skiing accident last week, Seibert said: "we are assuming she was travelling at low speed". On social media, some criticised the joking tone of the remark.

Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer had set off the weekend before Christmas to St Moritz, where she has been spending her holidays for years. At the time, gossip magazine Bunte published an article claiming that the chancellor had used the same pair of cross-country skis for over 20 years, quoting the manufacturer urging her to buy a new pair: "After about 10 years, our skis noticeably lose their tension."

Merkel's new cabinet was sworn in last month, after the longest coalition negotiations in the history of modern Germany. Even then, there had been talk of her as "the invisible chancellor", as many felt she had noticeably withdrawn herself from the political stage, allowing the Social Democrats and the Bavarian CSU to take centre stage. Now Germany and the rest of Europe will have to wait even longer for her to make a full return.