Von der Leyen’s father, Ernst Albrecht, was a senior Commission official in Belgium in the ’50s, before becoming a politician. Her mother, Heidi-Adele Albrecht, had a university doctorate and actively encouraged academic success. As a family, including her five siblings, they moved to Germany when she was 13-years-old.
She loves London
She studied economics at London’s LSE. During the time, she went by the name Rose Ladson to protect herself as German politicians were actively being targeted by Red Army Faction leftist militants. She picked Rose because her family nicknamed her “little rose”.
She’s since told Germany’s Die Zeit newspaper that “London was for me, then, the epitome of modernity: freedom, the joy of life, trying everything”. Apparently, she loved punk and rock concerts, and going out partying, telling the publication that she spent “significantly more time in the bars of Soho and in record stores in Camden than in the library”.
She has a reputation for being a workaholic (while raising seven children)
Believe it or not, von der Leyen has seven children: David (aged 33), Sophie (31), Donata (28), twins Victoria and Johanna (26), Egmont (22), and Gracia (21). She’s married to Heiko von der Leyen, a professor of medicine and the CEO of a medical engineering company. The couple met after von der Leyen returned to Germany to study, while part of the university choir.