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German Chancellor Angela Merkel's mother, Herlind Kasner, died at the age of 90, a government spokesman confirmed on Wednesday, Deutsche Welle reports.

"We ask that you respect the privacy of the chancellor and her family," the spokesman told news agency DPA.

Kasner is believed to have passed away at the beginning of April, according to German magazine SuperIllu and the mass circulation Bild newspaper, who first reported on her death.

A small group of family and friends are due to attend her funeral in the north eastern German town of Templin, where Kasner lived for many years, reported SuperIllu.

Merkel's mother was a former Latin and English teacher who was born in Danzig in 1928.

She gave birth to Merkel in the northern German city of Hamburg in 1954. She later moved to East Germany with her husband, Horst Kasner, a former pastor who died in 2011.

Even in her late 80s, Kasner continued to teach English courses three days a week at an adult education center in Templin, Bild reported.

"My hope is that learning is not only seen as strenuous and laborious, but rather as something that is fun and is beneficial," Kasner is reported as saying.