Influential Chancellor who reunified Germany
Helmut Kohl, the youngest ever German leader, was considered a poor public speaker, but his ruthless and shrewd back-room negotiating skills served him well
Helmut Kohl will be best known as the Chancellor who presided over German reunification in 1990 and as an influential proponent of European integration. Elected 6th Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, in 1982, he held the record as the youngest until Angela Merkel was elected in 2005. Up to now he held the record as the longest-serving Chancellor. He was also the first of the post-war generation who were too young to have been involved in the Second World War.
Born 1930, in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Helmut Kohl grew up in a family whose strong patriotism was tempered by Roman Catholicism. His father, a tax official, had been promoted from the ranks to officer in the First World War. His older brother was killed in the Second World War. Luckily for Helmut, the war ended just in time and he was able to leave his pre-military training camp and head for his devastated home town.
At 17, while still at the Max Planck Gymnasium (grammar school), he was one of the co-founders of the Junge Union branch, the youth movement of the Christian Democrats (CDU), in Ludwigshafen. Kohl studied history and politics at Frankfurt and Heidelberg universities being awarded a doctorate for a dissertation on the rebirth, after 1945, of political parties in the Palatinate. On leaving university, he was appointed full-time official of the Chemical Industry Association. At the same time he was advancing his political career. He served on his local town council, in the regional parliament and, still only 35, was elected the CDU Chairman in Rhineland-Palatinate.
At 39 he was elected, 19 May 1969, Minister-President (Prime Minister) of the Rhineland-Palatinate, the youngest leader of West Germany’s 11 regional states. He was also Deputy Chairman of the Federal CDU. As Prime Minister, until 1976, Kohl reformed the administrative structure in the Rhineland-Palatinate, introduced job-creation schemes, presided over the establishment of a second university, TrierKaiserlautern, and, despite his Catholicism, abolished faith schools.
In May 1972 Kohl was elected CDU Chairman. He was selected to be his party’s candidate for the Chancellorship in 1976 opposing the charismatic Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, with the slogan, ‘Freiheit statt Sozialismus’ (Freedom instead of Socialism). He was regarded as a shrewd back-room negotiator, ruthless, yet lacking a platform personality. He was considered a poor speaker, articulating as he did, with a strong regional accent. He was much underestimated.
Although the CDU made some progress, and Kohl was elected to the Bundestag, it was not enough to dislodge Schmidt. Kohl decided to not seek the Chancellorship at the election of 1980 and his career seemed to be in decline. However, the failure of the Christian Democratic challenger, Franz-Josef Strauss, to defeat Schmidt, improved Kohl’s chance of the top job in German politics. Schmidt’s SPD was divided over defence, nuclear policy, anti-terrorist strategy, and measures to combat rising unemployment following the oil crisis of 1979.
Its pro-business partner, the FDP, withdrew from the coalition and backed Kohl for Chancellor. He was duly elected, on 1 October 1982, by the Bundestag. He went to the country in March 1983, and to the surprise of some, the Christian Democrats won 244 seats with 34 for the FDP. The SPD was reduced to 198 and the Greens, cashing in on anti-nuclear feeling, entering the Bundestag for the first time, with 27 seats. Despite, considerable loss of support, on a lower turnout, Kohl’s Christian Democrats saw off a challenge in the election of 1987.
Kohl’s party was reduced to 223 seats, its FDP coalition partner improved its position to 46 seats, with the Greens gaining 42, and the SPD further reduced to 186. A new leader had appeared on the international stage, in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, and West German Foreign Minister and FDP leader, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, recognised him as a man of peace. At first Gorbachev did not appreciate Kohl. In 1986 he even likened him to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Their assessment of each other soon changed. When the Soviet leader and his wife flew to Bonn on 12 June, 1989, they received an ecstatic welcome. Ordinary Germans lined the streets shouting “Gorby, Gorby”. These scenes and the reception given to the Gorbachevs by Hannelore Kohl, in the Kohl’s modest home, convinced Gorbachev that West Germany was not revanchist. By then Gorbachev had made many reforms at home and promised not to intervene in the internal affairs of Soviet-bloc states.
Meanwhile, Kohl worked closely with French, Socialist, François Mitterrand, President since May 1981, and other European leaders to increase cooperation among the European nations. He was able to improve West Germany’s economy and the nation’s standing among European allies and with the United States led, since 1981, by Ronald Reagan. Kohl appeared to be more Atlanticist than his predecessor yet, in 1987, he received East German leader Erich Honecker - the first ever visit by an East German head of state to West Germany. This is generally seen as an indication that Kohl pursued Ostpolitik, a policy of detente between East and West,as vigorously as Schmidt had done.
Kohl was on an official visit in Poland when the Berlin Wall came down on the night of 9 November 1989. While the Chancellor encouraged movement towards democracy in the East and quietly supported the concept of German reunification, he had to tread carefully for fear of provoking a Soviet-backed crackdown in the GDR. Additionally, Kohl was concerned about the growing number of eastern refugees flooding into West Germany.
However, the changes came much faster than Kohl, Horst Teltschik, his foreign policy adviser, or most other people, had anticipated. When he visited the East German city, Dresden, in December 1989, he made an unscheduled speech to an East German crowd and was taken aback by the enthusiasm of his audience. This and other incidents convinced him of the desire of very many East Germans to gain reunification with West Germany. On 28 November, three weeks after East Germany’s border was opened, Kohl stunned the Bundestag — and the world — by unveiling a 10-point plan for German unity based on a confederation of the two states.