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Mr. Wulff, a key ally of Mrs. Merkel, left a voicemail message last month on the mobile phone of Kai Diekmann, editor of the newspaper, Bild, in which he spoke of a “war” if the newspaper disclosed an unusual personal loan that Mr. Wulff had received from the family of a German entrepreneur.
Bild went ahead anyway, and the resulting scandal quickly consumed the news media and political classes, prompting calls for Mr. Wulff’s resignation.
The news of the president’s call to the editor, first reported by two rival German newspapers, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, intensifies the political pressure on Mr. Wulff, who is widely judged to have handled the scandal poorly, providing vague and grudging explanations about the loan.
The episode has embarrassed Mrs. Merkel as she seeks to muster political capital to deal with the euro crisis. The post of president is largely ceremonial in Germany, but as head of state, he or she is also seen as the ultimate defender of the Constitution, in which freedom of the press is enshrined.
The chancellor championed Mr. Wulff in 2010 at a special parliamentary assembly to succeed Horst K?hler, who resigned as president after appearing to suggest that the German military should take a more active role in defense of the country’s economic interests. Although Mrs. Merkel ultimately succeeded in getting Mr. Wulff elected, it took three rounds of voting. In the first round, 44 members of her own party humiliated Mrs. Merkel by voting against Mr. Wulff.
In a statement on Monday, Mr. Wulff neither confirmed nor denied the latest allegations. “Freedom of the press is an important value for the president,” his office said. “But the president categorically declines to discuss off-the-record conversations and telephone calls.”
The news was met with a mixture of derision and outrage from the German news media establishment, prompting an unusual degree of solidarity with Bild, which uses a mix of sex, scandal and feel-good features to sell about three million copies a day.
“Prominent people have to accept critical reporting as part of freedom of speech,” Michael Konken, chairman of the German Association of Journalists, said in a statement. “No one ought to know this better than the head of state.”
The united front could make it more difficult for Mr. Wulff to cling to his post.
“Bild is Europe’s most powerful newspaper, and it is na?ve to think that you can stay in office without its support,” said Steffen Burkhardt, an expert on the German media and political scandals at the University of Hamburg.
Bild said Monday on its Web site that it had decided not to report on Mr. Wulff’s threatening message to Mr. Diekmann because the president had called the editor back two days later to apologize.
Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung did not disclose sources and did not publish transcripts of the call. But their reports, confirmed by Bild on Monday, gave new life to the imbroglio, which had fallen off front pages over the holidays.
“You always have in a scandal a first transgression and a second transgression, and the second transgression is often the one that matters more,” Mr. Burkhardt said.
In the message he left for Mr. Diekmann, Mr. Wulff reportedly threatened a lawsuit as well as a “final break” with Bild and its publisher, Axel Springer, which in the past has cultivated good relations with the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Mrs. Merkel and Mr. Wulff.
Mr. Wulff also called Mathias D?pf ner, the chief executive of Axel Springer, who rebuffed his entreaties, according to reports that were confirmed by Tobias Fr?hlich, a spokesman for Bild.
The disclosures demonstrate the continuing power of Bild, a newspaper that can make or break political careers. Bild strongly supported another ally of Mrs. Merkel’s, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, the defense minister at the time, after the discovery that he had plagiarized parts of his doctoral thesis. He often appeared in Bild in the company of his wife, Stephanie, a campaigner against child abuse. Despite Bild’s support, however, Mr. Guttenberg eventually resigned.
Mr. Wulff, too, burnished his image in the newspaper. Through a divorce in 2006, when he was the premier of the state of Lower Saxony, and a subsequent remarriage, he was depicted in Bild photos as a family man and devoted father.
The loan under scrutiny dates from 2008, the year in which Mr. Wulff married his second wife. He got €500,000, or about $650,000, from the wife of Egon Geerkens, the entrepreneur, to help him buy a home.
After Bild disclosed the loan, Mr. Wulff faced criticism that he had been economical with the truth in previously maintaining that he had no business relationships with Mr. Geerkens, a friend. Less than two weeks after the Bild article appeared, Mr. Wulff dismissed his longtime spokesman, Olaf Glaeseker, for unexplained reasons.
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