Helmut Kohl, father of German reunification, dies at 87
BERLIN, June 17 (Reuters) - Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the architect of Germany's 1990 reunification and mentor to Angela Merkel, has died at age 87, his Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) said on Friday.
The mass- selling newspaper Bild reported that Kohl died at 9.15 a.m. on Friday morning in bed at his home in Ludwigshafen, in western Germany, with his second wife, Maike Kohl-Richter, at his side.
Merkel, Germany's incumbent chancellor who grew up in communist East Germany before being appointed by Kohl to her first ministerial post, said he "changed my own life path decisively" by reuniting Germany.
"When a new spirit began to stir in eastern Europe in the 1980s, when, starting in Poland freedom was seized, when brave people in Leipzig, East Berlin and elsewhere in East Germany began a peaceful revolution, then Helmut Kohl was the right man at the right time," said Merkel, who was wearing black.
"He stood fast to the dream and aim of a united Germany even as others hesitated," she said in a televised statement from Rome.
Germany's longest- serving post-war chancellor from 1982 to 1998, Kohl was a driving force behind the introduction of the euro currency, persuading sceptical Germans to give up the deutschemark, a cherished symbol of the "economic miracle" of the 1950s and 1960s.
An imposing figure who formed an unlikely personal bond with socialist French President Francois Mitterrand in pushing for closer European integration, Kohl, a conservative, had been frail and used a wheelchair since suffering a bad fall in 2008.
By committing to anchor Germany within Europe under a common currency, he overcame resistance to reunification from Mitterrand, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister who feared the return of a powerful, united Germany.
"The maker of a united Germany and Franco- German friendship: with Helmut Kohl, we lose a great European," tweeted French President Emmanuel Macron, with an iconic picture of Kohl and Mitterrand holding hands at a memorial to the World War One battle of Verdun.
British Prime Minister Theresa May paid tribute to "a giant of European history" and "the father of modern Germany".
U.S. President Donald Trump said Kohl was a friend and ally of the United States. "The world has benefited from his vision and efforts," Trump said in a statement.
Shortly after leaving office, Kohl's reputation was tarnished by a financing scandal in his center-right CDU, now led by Merkel. Until his death, Kohl refused to identify the donors, saying he had given them his word.