German unifier Helmut Kohl dies

HELMUT Kohl, who has died at the age of 87, was the German chancellor whose 16 years in office between 1982 and 1998 will forever be remembered for the tumultuous months which saw the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of his country.

The reunification that followed the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe in 1989 proved a political opportunity that almost certainly salvaged his career.

Kohl was both an unswerving Atlanticist and a committed European. He possessed a clear vision of a united Europe that inspired its founding fathers in the aftermath of World War 2.

At home, his sometimes bumbling image helped him to win over many voters alienated by the hauteur of his predecessor, Helmut Schmidt.

His early steps as chancellor reflected a political philosophy shaped 40 years earlier at the end of a world war which left him a 15year-old army cadet who had never fired a shot in anger but had lost his elder brother. He considered it his mission to integrate Germany fully into Europe and believed this had to be achieved through a close bond between Germany and France.

Kohl was over the years to gain greater confidence in foreign affairs than in many domestic issues. Early on, however, he blundered, for example when comparing Mikhail Gorbachev to Joseph Goebbels. And he bored Margaret Thatcher stiff with his rock and fossil collection, as friction developed between the two over European policies.

Germany’s capitulation in May 1945 saw him stranded at a training camp at Berchtesgaden, where Hitler had his “Eagle’s Nest”. The boy trudged across a shattered Germany to his home town.

Kohl was a master delegator. He knew who could do the job best and let them get on with it.

His politics were essentially of the centre-right, but he could trim his ONE COUNTRY: Helmut Kohl was the architect of reunification and his party’s sails to the wind.

At the age of 52, Kohl had become West Germany’s youngest chancellor. Confirmed in office in the 1983 election, he subsequently proved to be unbeatable. His greatest electoral triumph came in October 1990 when, having offered East Germans Deutschmark parity for their worthless currency against Bundesbank advice, he stormed to victory in unified Germany’s first federal election, to be united Germany’s first chancellor since the war.

By the late 1990s, however, his star had dimmed. Faced with rising unemployment, he was heavily defeated in the 1998 federal elections.

In 1999 it was discovered that, under his leadership, the Christian Democratic Union had received illegal funding. The fallout from the scandal was compounded by the suicide of his wife, Hannelore.

In 2008 he suffered a stroke during a fall, following which he required permanent care.

That year Kohl married his 43year-old partner, Maike Richter. — ©