Started as a reformer, reviled as an outcast, celebrated as a unity chancellor:Helmut Kohl's life as a politician has been characterized by many ups and downs. In the end, the man from the Palatinate achieved something that few had expected:he made history.
The Second World War left its mark
Helmut Kohl, born on April 3, 1930, was too young to be sent to the front in World War II. The son of a tax official experienced the horrors of war first-hand:As a member of a school fire-fighting squad, he had to rescue the injured and dead and put out fires after bomb attacks on his hometown of Ludwigshafen. In the last months of the war his older brother Walter was killed.
Kohl was trained as an anti-aircraft helper in Berchtesgaden, but was not deployed. Kohl later described his war experiences as shaping his personality and his work as a politician.
Kohl was already very sociable as a child:right after the first day of school, "Helle" - his nickname - brought a few of his new friends home with him. As a student he was rather mediocre. In the clique, however, he liked to set the tone - and asserted his position as leader by beatings if necessary.
Kohl joined the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Junge Union while he was still at school. He took an active part in political discussions and meetings. He was often the youngest among those present.
In addition to preparing for his Abitur, which he passed in 1950, Kohl worked in construction and as a gas station attendant. When the Federal Republic was founded in May 1949, he was able to afford a used motorcycle. On one of his first jaunts, he took a 16-year-old from the neighboring town with him:Hannelore Renner, who became his wife eleven years later.
Industrialize the homeland of "vines and turnips"
In 1950 Kohl began his history and law studies in Frankfurt, one year later he switched to the University of Heidelberg. Kohl continued to live at home and financed his studies as a stone grinder at BASF, among other things. Parallel to his studies, he became increasingly involved in the CDU. Half seriously, half jokingly, he stated that he wanted to become "Konrad Adenauer's secretary".
After receiving his doctorate in 1958, Kohl went into politics, but at the same time worked as a consultant for a chemical association. At 29, he became the youngest member of the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament. Kohl made a name for himself as a doer. His goal:to modernize the Palatinate, which was considered the home of "vines and turnips", and convert it into an industrial country.
He propagated an open style of politics and campaigned for more citizen relations. In addition to his work as a state politician, he was a city councilor and CDU faction leader in Ludwigshafen from 1960. In 1966 Kohl became state chairman of the Rhineland-Palatinate CDU, three years later Prime Minister. At the age of 39 – no West German prime minister before him was that young.
Reformers and doers in Rhineland-Palatinate
Chancellor at the second attempt
In Rhineland-Palatinate, Kohl pushed ahead with major reforms in administration and in the social and health care system. When he won the absolute majority in the state elections in 1971, voices within the party became louder that he should switch to federal politics.
After the lost federal elections of 1972, the hopeful Kohl became chairman of the federal CDU in 1973. Three years later he stood as a candidate for chancellor. But although he achieved 48.6 percent and thus the second-best Union result since the war, he did not succeed in replacing the incumbent Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and his social-liberal coalition.
Kohl did not return to Mainz, however, he remained in Bonn as opposition leader. There, for the first time in his career, he faced a violent headwind:many media ridiculed him for his strong dialect and his sometimes awkward demeanor. The "black giant" became the "Oggersheimer", the provincial who didn't seem up to the urbane Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.
There was also a crisis in the Union:Franz Josef Strauss, head of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU), threatened to split off his party and described Kohl as "totally incompetent". But Kohl was undeterred.
In 1978 he had a basic program adopted that positioned the CDU as a modern people's party. After Strauss was also unable to get a majority for the Union as a candidate for chancellor in 1980, it was Kohl's turn again two years later.
After the break-up of the social-liberal coalition, he replaced Helmut Schmidt with a constructive vote of no confidence and was elected Federal Chancellor on October 1, 1982. Kohl promised the Germans a "spiritual and moral change" and an improvement in the economic situation.
1982:Kohl becomes chancellor
Starting with blunders
In his early years as chancellor, Kohl didn't have a lucky hand. He and his government were involved in several affairs, and Kohl also behaved clumsily in foreign policy.
He compared the Soviet head of state Mikhail Gorbachev to Hitler's propaganda minister Goebbels and visited the Bitburg military cemetery with US President Ronald Reagan, where several SS soldiers are buried. Unemployment in Germany also remained high. Nevertheless, he won the federal election in 1987 – albeit with losses. The criticism grew, also within the party.
But Kohl continued to cultivate his leadership style, which was based primarily on personal contacts. He divided his fellow men into three groups:friends, enemies and unimportant. Kohl noticed when someone did him a favor and returned the gesture.
Anyone who stood in his way, however, could be sure that Kohl would retaliate sooner or later. He had a very good memory. And where it failed, he used his little notebook, which he always had to hand.
His most important tool was the telephone:After 40 years in the CDU, Kohl had allies down to the smallest local association. As chancellor, too, he presented himself as down-to-earth and down-to-earth:he liked to receive visitors in sandals and casual clothing, he spent his summer vacation hiking on Lake Wolfgang, and he served state guests his favorite dish – the Palatinate Saumagen.
World Cup 1986:Kohl looks back on a happy Diego Maradona
The Chancellor who united
In 1989 major global political upheavals took place. The Soviet Union embarked on a course of detente and opening, which many countries in the Eastern bloc followed. The leadership of the GDR initially tried to resist this development, but was eventually overwhelmed by events:the Berlin Wall fell on November 9th.
The reunification of Germany was suddenly within reach. And Helmut Kohl, who had often been accused of a passive political style of sitting out, became an actor.
He seized the "mantle of history" and quickly and purposefully laid the political foundations for German unity. Together with his Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, he involved the neighboring countries, the United States of America and the Soviet Union in the process.
When German reunification took place on October 3, 1990, Helmut Kohl had reached the zenith of his career. He made history - and many people in the East and West celebrated him for it.
Kohl tried to dispel concerns abroad about a Germany that had regained its strength. He saw reunification as a building block towards a new Europe. For him, German unity and European unification were "two sides of the same coin". He initiated the introduction of the euro, economic union and the eastern enlargement of the European Union (EU). In 1994 he was re-elected again, but during this period of office dissatisfaction with the "eternal chancellor" increased.
The economy in eastern Germany did not improve as quickly as many expected. Kohl continued to be seen as someone who sat things out. In 1998 the payoff came:16 years for Kohl were enough, the majority of voters thought. The successor in the Chancellery was Gerhard Schröder from the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).
Helmut Kohl is cheered at an election campaign event in 1990
Donation scandal and withdrawal
Kohl had been in office longer than any of his predecessors. And during his reign, Germany and Europe had changed fundamentally. But his time as an "Elder Statesman", who is respected and revered by all and asked for advice, did not last long.
At the end of 1999, a party donation affair became public, and he was at the center of it. Kohl admitted to having received donations in the millions for the CDU without declaring them accordingly.
He did not say where these donations came from, referring to his "word of honour", although the Party Donations Act required him to do so. Since important files on arms deliveries and the sale of a chemical plant in Leuna could not be found in the Chancellery, allegations of bribery were raised.
The CDU Presidium and Executive Board moved away from Kohl, who voluntarily let his honorary presidency rest. The investigations against him were later dropped, but the relationship with his party was permanently disrupted.
Kohl's private life also made headlines. In 2001, his wife Hannelore, suffering from a painful light allergy, took her own life. His son Walter wrote a book in which he lamented his father's emotional coldness, constant absence and willingness to stage.
Peter, Kohl's second son, also publicly criticized his father. Helmut Kohl, who was struggling with health problems after a serious fall and was in a wheelchair, remarried in 2008. He was rarely seen in public after that. Once known for his huge network, Kohl withdrew almost completely and broke off contact with many old companions and also with his sons.
Helmut Kohl died on June 16, 2017 at the age of 87.