Chancellor guided West Germany in 1970s
BERLIN — Helmut Schmidt, the chancellor who guided West Germany through economic turbulence and Cold War tensions, stood firm against a wave of homegrown terrorism and became a respected elder statesman, died Tuesday. He was 96.
Schmidt died at his house in Hamburg, according to German weekly Die Zeit, of which Schmidt was a co-publisher.
Schmidt’s friend and doctor, Heiner Greten, told Bild newspaper the former chancellor died with partner Ruth Loah and daughter Susanne at home with him.
“He died the way he wanted: in his bed at home and fully without pain,” Greten said.
Schmidt, a centre-left Social Democrat, led West Germany from 1974 to 1982. He was elected chancellor by lawmakers in May 1974 after the resignation of fellow Social Democrat Willy Brandt, triggered when a top aide to Brandt was unmasked as an East German agent.
Sigmar Gabriel, chairman of the Social Democrats and Germany’s vicechancellor, recalled Schmidt delivering his last big speech at an SPD party convention in 2011.
Gabriel said he reminded party members that Germany has “a responsibility to hold Europe together.”
As a new leader, Schmidt brought a sometimes abrasive self-confidence and his experience as West Germany’s defence, finance and economy ministers to the job, which he took during the economic downturn that followed the 1973 oil crisis.
Schmidt’s chancellorship coincided with a tense period in the Cold War, including the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
He went along the following year with the U.S.led boycott of the Moscow Olympics, although he later said that it “brought nothing.” Schmidt later said he had disputes with the United States under president Jimmy Carter over financial and defence issues but concluded “that we Germans could not afford an extra conflict with America,” West Germany’s protector against the Soviets.
Amid efforts to ward off a global recession, Schmidt was among the movers behind the first economic summit of leading industrial powers at Rambouillet, France, in 1975, which later turned into the annual Group of Seven meeting.
He and then-French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing also played leading roles organizing the European Monetary System, paving the way for the common European cur- rency, the euro.
Schmidt and Loki, the childhood sweetheart he married in 1942, had one daughter, Susanne. Their first child, a son named Helmut Walter, died in 1945 when he was only a few months old. Loki Schmidt died at age 91 in 2010.
Schmidt in 2012 introduced longtime acquaintance Loah, a former employee at Die Zeit, as his new partner.