She's one of Germany's richest and most powerful businesswomen. Now Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, the fur-clad owner of the eponymous car-components firm, is asking Berlin to bail it out with up to €4bn (£3.7bn).

And today, in an interview with the country's best-selling tabloid, Bild, the 67-year-old worth an estimated £6bn refuses to dip into her considerable wealth to help pay off the family firm's huge debts.

Schaeffler, which makes ball-bearings, won control of tyre-maker Continental last year with a €10bn hostile takeover partly secured by alleged stealth through the use of obscure options. Conti was then three times bigger than Schaeffler.

But with the global car industry in meltdown, Schaeffler and her executive team find themselves with a mountain of debt they are unable to finance and stand accused of over-reaching themselves with the takeover.

Only hours after crisis talks with government ministers in Berlin last night about the state taking a stake in Conti, she told Bild: "Our wealth is bound up with the company. We have always invested the profits to grow and develop the company."

Having bought Conti at a big discount, she said nobody could have anticipated the collapse in its shares and she could not call the deal off on legal grounds.

But Peer Steinbrück, the arch-conservative finance minister forced to run up Germany's biggest post-war budget deficit, has already rejected Schaeffler's request for a helping hand from the government's latest stimulus package. Other ministers are reportedly more receptive.

Steinbrück said: "We simply cannot explain to people how we can use taxpayers' money to support firms enjoying billions in wealth."

But Schaeffler can rely on powerful political allies, including former chancellor Gerhard Schröder and Lower Saxony premier Christian Wulff, who recently helped her and her son gain seats on Conti's supervisory board. Conti is based in Hannover, Lower Saxony's capital, where Schröder was premier in the early 1990s.