Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl dies at 87
The post-WWII leader of West Germany also presided over the reunification of the divided nation.
BERLIN — Helmut Kohl, one of the towering figures of European politics and whose greatest achievement is considered the skillful reunification of a divided Germany, died Friday at age 87.
Kohl, who was chancellor first of West Germany and then of a united Germany from 1982 to 1998, combined a dogged pursuit of the European idea of unity with a keen instinct for history.
Less than a year after the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, he spearheaded the end of Germany’s decades-long division into East and West, ushering in a new era in European politics.
The close bond that Kohl built with otherworld leaders helped him persuade both anti-communist Western allies and the leaders of the collapsing Soviet Union that a strong, united Germany could live at peace with its neighbors.
“Helmut Kohl was the most important European statesman since World War II,” former President Bill Clinton said in 2011, adding that Kohl answered the big questions of his time “correctly for Germany, correctly for Europe, correctly for the United States, correctly for the future of the world.”
Former President George H.W. Bush said the world had lost “a true friend of freedom.”
“Working closely with my very good friend to help achieve a peaceful end to the Cold War and the unification of Germany within NATO will remain one of the great joys of my life,” Bush said.
While physically imposing, Kohl moved nimbly in domestic politics and among rivals in his conservative Christian Democratic Union, holding power for 16 years until his defeat by center-left rival Gerhard Schroeder in 1998.
Thatwas followed by the eruption of a party financing scandal that threatened to tarnish his legacy.
Born on April 3, 1930, in Ludwigshafen, a western industrial city on the Rhine, Kohl joined the Hitler Youth but missed service in the Nazi army. At 15, hewas about to be pressed into service in a German antiaircraft gun unit when World War II ended. His oldest brother, Walter, was killed in action a few months earlier.
A Roman Catholic, Kohl joined the CDU shortly after its postwar founding. He became governor of the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1969.
Kohl’s first attempt to unseat Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt failed in 1976, but Kohl seized his chance six years later, taking power on Oct. 1, 1982 when a junior coalition party switched sides.
Kohl combined an understanding of the worries of ordinary Germans with a hunger for power, getting elected four times.
Kohl was helped in securing German unity by his friendships with French President Francois Mitterrand and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who approved NATO membership for a united Germany and agreed to pull Soviet troops out of East Germany.
“It was real luck that, at that difficult time, leading nations were headed by statesmen with a sense of responsibility, adamant about defending the interests of their countries but also able to consider the interests of others, able to overcome the barrier of prevailing suspicion about partnership and mutual trust,” Gorbachev said Friday in a message of condolences released by his foundation.
Chancellor Angela Merkel, once Kohl’s protegee, said Germans could be grateful for the trust her predecessor established with other nations’ leaders.
Speaking from Rome, Merkel said Kohl’s decision to take advantage of the pro-democracy protests sweeping through the Eastern bloc in the 1980s demonstrated his acute political instincts.
“He held fast to the dream and goal of a united Germany, even as others wavered,” she said.
“Like millions of others, I was able to go from a life under a dictatorship to a life of freedom,” Merkel said.