Ex-West German Chancellor Schmidt dies
Statesman battled terrorism, helped lay foundation for euro
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.
“We have lost a sharp-witted adviser, a trusted companion and a good friend,” Die Zeit said in a statement. “Until recently he contributed to the editorial team with his analyses, his commentaries and his interviews about current affairs.”
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.
Schmidt, a center-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 vice chancellor, 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.”
“He was someone who, I believe, will remain for generations of Germans one of the most significant statesmen of our country.”
As a new leader, Schmidt brought a sometimes abrasive self-confidence and his experience as West Germany’s defense, 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.”
He and then-French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing also played leading roles organizing the European Monetary System, aimed at protecting European currencies from wild fluctuations, which ultimately paved the way for the common European currency, the euro.
“If the euro exists, we owe that to Helmut Schmidt,” French President Francois Hollande said, adding that “it’s a great European whose life has just ended.
“He always said the market economy must be allowed to live but also that it needed a social dimension.”
Born Dec. 23, 1918, the son of a half-Jewish schoolteacher in Hamburg, Schmidt was drafted as a soldier during World War II, Schmidt’s unit was deployed in the Soviet Union in 1941. He was sent to the western front at the end of the war and taken as prisoner by British forces in April 1945. He was released that August.
Schmidt entered West Germany’s parliament in 1953, where he earned the nickname “Schmidt the Lip,” a tribute to his sharp-tongued debating skills. As chancellor, Schmidt’s confidence served him well in facing down the homegrown terrorism of the Red Army Faction, which grew out of a leftist student movement in the 1960s.