Kissinger’s secret to longevity
Veteran diplomat’s unquenchable curiosity helped him surmount challenges of statecraft
On May 27, my father, Henry Kissinger, celebrated his 100th birthday. This might have an air of inevitability for anyone familiar with his force of character and love of historical symbolism. Not only has he outlived most of his peers, eminent detractors and students, but he has also remained indefatigably active throughout his 90s.
Even the pandemic did not slow him down: Since 2020, he has completed two books and begun work on a third. He returned from the Bilderberg Conference in Lisbon just in time to embark on a series of centennial celebrations that will take him from New York to London and finally to his hometown of Furth, Germany.
My father’s longevity is especially miraculous when one considers the health regimen he has followed throughout his adult life, which includes a diet heavy on bratwurst (sausage) and Wiener schnitzel (veal cutlet), a career of relentlessly stressful decision-making, and a love of sports purely as a spectator, never a participant.
How then to account for his enduring mental and physical vitality? He has an unquenchable curiosity that keeps him dynamically engaged with the world. His mind is a heat-seeking weapon that identifies and grapples with the existential challenges of the day. In the 1950s, the issue was the rise of nuclear weapons and their threat to humanity. About five years ago, aged 95, my father became obsessed with the philosophical and practical implications of artificial intelligence.
Diplomacy was never a game for my father
The other secret to my father’s endurance is his sense of mission. Although he has been caricatured as a cold realist, he is anything but dispassionate. He believes deeply in such arcane concepts as patriotism, loyalty and bipartisanship. It pains him to see the nastiness in today’s public discourse and the seeming collapse of the art of diplomacy. As a child, I remember the warmth of his friendships with people whose politics might have been different from his, such as Kay Graham, Ted Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. Kennedy loved to play practical jokes that my father thoroughly enjoyed.
Diplomacy was never a game for my father. As a refugee from Nazi Germany, he lost 13 family members and countless friends to the Holocaust. He returned to his native Germany as an American soldier, participating in the liberation of the Ahlem concentration camp. There, he witnessed the depths to which mankind can sink unconstrained by international structures of peace and justice. In June, we will return to Furth, where he will lay a wreath at the grave of his grandfather, who did not escape.
I know that no son can be truly objective about his father’s legacy, but I am proud of my father’s efforts to anchor statecraft with consistent principles and an awareness of historical reality. This is the mission he has pursued for the better part of a century, using his rare brain and unflagging energy to serve the country that saved his family and launched him on a journey beyond his wildest dreams.