Helmut Kohl (1930 - 2017) was a German politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1982 and of reunified Germany until 1998, the longest chancellorship since Otto von Bismarck. [1] Leader of the Christian Democratic Union, he responded to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 by pressing for rapid unification, achieved in October 1990. [2] He was also a driving force behind the Maastricht Treaty and the single European currency, and was named an honorary citizen of Europe in 1998.
Early life and education
Kohl was born on 3 April 1930 in Friesenheim, a district of Ludwigshafen in the Rhineland, into a Catholic civil servant's family. [1] He was conscripted into an anti-aircraft auxiliary unit in the closing months of the Second World War, but was too young to see combat; his elder brother was killed in the war. The experience of growing up under National Socialism and its collapse shaped his lifelong commitment to European integration and to the Western alliance.
He studied law and then history and political science at Goethe University Frankfurt and Heidelberg University, completing a doctorate on the re-emergence of political parties in the Palatinate after 1945. [2] He joined the Christian Democratic Union in 1946, while still a teenager.
Rise in the Christian Democratic Union
Kohl was elected to the parliament of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1959 and became minister-president of the state in 1969, where he built a reputation as a moderniser of the party organisation. [1] He became national chairman of the CDU in 1973 and was the party's unsuccessful candidate for chancellor in 1976.
In October 1982 the collapse of the coalition between the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats allowed Kohl to become chancellor through a constructive vote of no confidence against Helmut Schmidt, a position he confirmed at the election of March 1983. [3] In office he supported the NATO deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Germany despite large protests, and pursued close relations with the United States and with France, where his partnership with President François Mitterrand became a symbol of reconciliation.
Reunification
When the Berlin Wall opened in November 1989, Kohl moved quickly. Within weeks he presented a ten-point programme for confederation between the two German states, and then pressed for full unification against considerable international hesitation, notably in Britain and France. [2] He secured Soviet agreement under Mikhail Gorbachev to a united Germany remaining in NATO, and negotiations among the two German states and the four wartime Allies produced the settlement of 1990.
A monetary union in July 1990 exchanged East German marks for Deutsche Marks on terms favourable to eastern savers but costly for eastern industry, and political unification followed on 3 October 1990. [1] The economic transformation of the east proved far slower and more expensive than promised, and unemployment there remained high for years.
Europe, defeat and later years
Kohl was central to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, which created the European Union, and to the decision to replace the Deutsche Mark with the euro, a step that was unpopular with much of the German public. [3] After sixteen years in office he was defeated by Gerhard Schröder's Social Democrats in 1998.
His reputation was damaged in 1999 when a party financing scandal revealed that the CDU had received undeclared donations during his leadership; Kohl admitted accepting them but refused to name the donors, and resigned his honorary chairmanship. [1] He remained a revered figure abroad, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Charlemagne Prize and the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour. [4] He died in Ludwigshafen on 16 June 2017 and was honoured with the first European act of mourning held for a statesman.
