Helmut Kohl
Dr. Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (born
April 3,
1930) is a
Catholic German conservative politician and statesman. He was
Chancellor of Germany from
1982 to
1998 (
West Germany between 1982 and 1990) and the chairman of the
Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from
1973-
1998. His 16-year tenure was the longest of any German chancellor since
Otto von Bismarck. During his time in office, he was the architect of the
German Reunification and, together with French President
François Mitterrand, the
Maastricht Treaty which created the
European Union.
In
1998 he was named
Honorary Citizen of Europe by the
European heads of state or government for his extraordinary work for European integration and cooperation, an honour previously only bestowed on
Jean Monnet. Together with Mitterrand, he received the
Charlemagne Award.
Youth
Kohl was born in
Ludwigshafen am Rhein,
Palatinate,
Germany, to Hans Kohl, a civil servant, and his wife Cäcilie. He was the third child born into this conservative,
Roman Catholic family which before and after
1933 remained loyal to the
Catholic Centre Party. His older brother died in the
Second World War as a teenage soldier. In the last weeks of the war, Helmut Kohl was inducted also, but he was not involved in any combat.
Kohl attended the Ruprecht elementary school, and continued at the Max Planck Gymnasium. In
1946 he joined the recently founded
CDU. In
1947 he was one of the co-founders of the
Junge Union-branch in Ludwigshafen. After graduating in
1950 he began to study law in
Frankfurt am Main. In
1951 he switched to the
University of Heidelberg where he majored in
History and
Political Science. In
1953 he joined the board of the
Rhineland-Palatinate branch of the CDU. In
1954 he became vice-chair of the Junge Union in
Rhineland-Palatinate. In
1955 he returned to the board of the Rhineland-Palatinate branch of the CDU.
Life before politics
After graduating in
1956 he became fellow at the Alfred Weber Institute of the University of Heidelberg. In
1958 he was promoted
dr.phil. for his thesis "The Political Developments in the Palatinate and the Reconstruction of Political Parties after 1945". After that he entered business, first as an assistant to the director of a foundry in Ludwigshafen and in
1959 as a manager for the Industrial Union for Chemistry in Ludwigshafen. In this year he also becomes chair of the Ludwigshafen branch of the CDU. In the following year he married
Hannelore Renner, whom he had known since
1948; they have two sons together.
Political Life
In
1960 he was elected into the municipal council of Ludwigshafen where he served as leader of the CDU party until
1969. In
1963 he was also elected into the
Landtag of
Rhineland-Palatinate and served as leader of the CDU party in that legislature. From
1966 until
1973 he served as the chair of the CDU, and he was also a member of the Federal CDU board. After his election as party-chair he was named as the successor to Peter Altmeier, who was minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate at the time. However after the Landtag-election which followed; Altmeier remained minister-president.
On
May 19,
1969 Kohl was elected minister-president of
Rheinland-Pfalz, as the successor to Altmeier. During his term as minister-president Kohl founded the
University of Trier-Kaiserlautern and enacted territorial reform. Also in
1969 Kohl became the vice-chair of the federal CDU party.
In
1971 he was a candidate to become federal chairman but was not elected. Rainer Barzel took the position instead. In
1972 Barzel attempted to force a cabinet crisis in the
SPD/
FDP government, which failed, leading him to step down. In
1973 Kohl succeeded him as federal chairman, he retained this position until
1998.
In the
1976 federal election, Kohl was the CDU/CSU's candidate for chancellor. The CDU/CSU coalition performed very well, winning 48.6% of the vote. However they were kept out of the center-left cabinet formed by the
Social Democratic Party of Germany and
Free Democratic Party, led by Social Democrat
Helmut Schmidt. Kohl then retired as minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate to become the leader of the CDU/CSU in the
Bundestag. He was succeeded by Bernhard Vogel. In the
1980 federal elections, Kohl had to play second fiddle, when CSU-leader
Franz Josef Strauß became the CDU/CSU's candidate for chancellor. Strauß was also kept out of government by the SPD/FDP alliance. Unlike Kohl, Strauß did not want to continue as the leader of the CDU/CSU and remained Prime Minister of
Bavaria. Kohl remained as leader of the opposition, under the second Schmidt cabinet.
On
September 17,
1982 a conflict of economic policy occurred between the governing SPD/FDP coalition partners. The FDP wanted to radically liberalise the labour market, while the SPD wanted to protect the rights of workers. The FDP began talks with the CDU/CSU to form a new government.
On
October 1,
1982, the CDU proposed a
constructive vote of no confidence which was supported by the FDP. Such a motion had been proposed once before, against Brandt in
1972. The motion carried, and on
October 3] the Bundestag voted in a
new CDU/CSU-FDP coalition cabinet, with Kohl as the chancellor. Many of the important details of the new coalition had been hammered out on
September 20, though minor details were reportedly still being hammered out as the vote took place.
The foundation of this cabinet is still considered controversial. Although the new cabinet was legitimate according to the
Basic Law, it was contentious because during the 1980 elections the FDP and CDU/CSU were and not allied. To answer this problem, Kohl did something more controversial. He called a confidence vote only a month after being sworn in. Members of the coalition partners abstained from voting, thereby bringing down the government. and forcing
Federal President Karl Carstens to dissolve the Bundestag in January 1983. In the
federal elections of March 1983, Kohl won a smashing victory. The CDU/CSU won 48.8%, while the FDP won 7.0%. Some opposition members of the Bundestag asked the
Federal constitutional court to declare the whole proceedings unconstitutional. It denied their claim.
The
second Kohl cabinet pushed through several controversial plans, including the stationing of
NATO midrange missiles, against major opposition from the peace movement.
On January 24,
1984, Kohl spoke before the Knesset, as the first Chancellor of the post-war generation. In his speech he used Günter Gaus' famous sentence, that he had "the mercy of a late birth".
On
September 22,
1984 Kohl met the French president
François Mitterrand at
Verdun, where the
Battle of Verdun between France and Germany had taken place during the
First World War. Together they commemorated the deaths of both World Wars. The photograph, which depicted their minutes long handshake became an important symbol of French-German reconcilliation. Kohl und Mitterrand developed a close political relationship, forming an important motor for
European integration. Together they laid the foundations for European projects, like
Eurocorps and
Arte. This French-German cooperation also was vital for important European projects, like the
Treaty of Maastricht and the
Euro.
On May 5,
1985 Kohl met U.S. president
Ronald Reagan at the Soldier's cemetery in Bitburg to commemorate the soldiers who were victims of the Second World War. This was a controversial action because members of the
Waffen-SS were buried there as well.
After the
federal elections of 1987 Kohl won a slightly reduced majority and formed his
third cabinet. The SPD's candidate for chancellor was the Minister-President of
North Rhine-Westphalia,
Johannes Rau.
In
1987 Kohl 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 a sign that Kohl pursued
Ostpolitik, a policy of
detente between East and West. Following the breach of the
Berlin Wall in 1989, Kohl's handling of the East German issue would become the turning point of his chancellorship.
Taking advantage of the historic political changes occurring in East Germany, Kohl presented a ten point plan for "Overcoming of the division of Germany and Europe" without consulting his coalition partner the FDP, or the Western Allies. In February
1990, he visited the
Soviet Union seeking a guarantee from Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev that the USSR would allow German reunification to proceed. On
May 18, 1990, he signed an economic and social union treaty with East Germany. Against the will of the president of the federal bank, he allowed a 1:1 conversion course for wages, interest and rent between the
West and
East Marks. In the end this policy would seriously hurt companies in the New Länder. Together with Foreign Minister
Hans-Dietrich Genscher, Kohl was able to resolve talks with the former Allies of the Second World War to allow
German reunification and the expansion of the NATO into the former East German state. On
October 3,
1990 the East German state was abolished and its territory reunified with West Germany. After the fall of the Berlin Wall Kohl confirmed that
historically German territories east of the
Oder-Neisse line were definitively part of the
Republic of Poland, thereby finally ending the
West German territorial claims. In
1993 Kohl confirmed, in a treaty with the
Czech Republic, that Germany would no longer bring forward territorial claims as to the pre-1945
ethnic German so-called
Sudetenland. This was a disappointment for the German
Heimatvertriebene.
After the
1990 elections â€" the first free, fair and democratic all-German elections since the
Weimar Republic era â€" Kohl won by a landslide over opposition candidate and prime minister of
Saarland,
Oskar Lafontaine. He formed the
Cabinet Kohl IV.
After the
federal elections of 1994 Kohl was narrowly re-elected. He defeated the Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate
Rudolf Scharping. The SPD was however able to win a majority in the
Bundesrat, which significantly limited Kohl's power. In foreign politics, Kohl was more successful, for instance getting
Frankfurt am Main as the seat for the
European Central Bank.
By the late 1990s, the aura surrounding Kohl had largely worn off amid rising unemployment figures. He was heavily defeated in the
1998 federal elections by the minister-president of
Niedersachsen,
Gerhard Schröder. A -
green coalition government led by Schröder replaced Kohl's government on
October 27,
1998. He immediately resigned as CDU leader and largely retired from politics. However, he remained a member of the Bundestag until he decided not to run for reelection in the
2002 election.
Life after Politics
Kohl's life after politics was characterized by the CDU-party finance scandal and by developments in his personal life.
A massive party financing scandal became public in 1999, when it was discovered that the CDU had received and maintained illegal funding under his leadership.
Investigations by the Bundestag into the sources of illegal CDU funds, mainly stored in Geneva bank accounts, revealed two sources: :# Sales of German tanks to
Saudi Arabia (kickback question), :# Privatization fraud in collusion with the late
French President
François Mitterrand who wanted 2,550 unused allotments in the former East Germany for the then French owned
Elf Aquitaine.
In December 1994 the CDU majority in the Bundestag enacted a law that nullified all rights of the current owners. Over 300 million DM in illegal funds were discovered in accounts in the canton Geneva. The fraudulently acquired allotments were then privatized as part of Elf Aquitaine and ended up with TotalFinaElf, now
Total S.A., after amalgamation.
Kohl himself claimed that Elf Aquitaine had offered (and meanwhile made) a massive investment in East Germany's chemical industry together with the takeover of 2,000 gas stations in Germany which were formerly owned by national oil company Minol. Elf Aquitaine is supposed to have financed CDU illegally as ordered by Mitterrand, as it was usual practice in African countries.
Kohl and other German and French politicians defended themselves that they were promoting reconciliation and cooperation between France and Germany for the sake of European integration and peace, and that they had no personal motives for accepting foreign party funding.
In 2002 Kohl left the Bundestag and officially retreated from politics. In recent years, Kohl has been largely rehabilitated by his party again. After taking office,
Angela Merkel invited her former patron to the Chancellor's Office and Ronald Pofalla, the Secretary-General of the CDU, announced that the CDU will cooperate more closely with Kohl, "to take advantage of the experience of this great statesman", as Pofalla put it.
On July 5, 2001
Hannelore Kohl, his wife, committed suicide, after suffering from a light allergy for years. On March 4, 2004 he published the first of his Memoires called "Memories 1930-1982", they contain memories from the period 1930 to 1982, when he became chancellor. The second part, published on November 3, 2005 included the first half of his chancellorship(from 1982 to 1990). On
December 28,
2004, Kohl was air-lifted by the
Sri Lankan Air Force after having been stranded in a hotel by the
2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.
Kohl had strong, although complex and somewhat ambiguous political views, focussing on economic matters and on international politics.
*Economically, Kohl's political views and policies were influenced by
Ronald Reagan's and
Margaret Thatcher's neoliberalism (reform of the
welfare state, lowering
taxation to allow individual initiative) although Christian-Democracy traditionally includes elements drawn from social catholicism.
*In international politics Kohl was committed to
European integration, maintaining close relations with the French president
Mitterrand. Parallel to this he was committed to
German Reunification. Although he continued the
Ostpolitik of his social-democratic predecessor, Kohl also supported Reagan's more aggressive policies in order to weaken the
USSR.
* It is under his leadership that Germany abandoned the
Mark and the
jus sanguinis, two pillars of its national identity.
At the earlier years of his tenure, Kohl faced stiff opposition from the West German political left. His adversaries frequently referred to him by the widely known disparaging nickname of
Birne (a German word for
pear; after unflattering cartoons showing Kohl's head as a pear). This public ridicule subsided as Kohl's political star began to rise: as the leader of European integration and an important figure in the German reunification. Kohl became one of the most popular politician in Germany and a greatly respected European statesman. Some criticize him for taking personal credit for German reunification, while without historical developments in the USSR and East Germany in the late
1980s, reunification would not have been possible. After his chancellorship, especially when the claims of corruption sprang up, Kohl fell in public perception.
Prizes
*In
1988 Kohl and Mitterrand received
Karlspreis the price for his contribution to French-German friendship and European Union
*In
1996 he was made honorary doctor of the
Catholic University of Louvain.
*In
1996 Kohl received an order for his humanitarian achievements from the Jewish organisation
B'nai B'rith.
*In
December 11,
1998 he was made honorary citizen of Europe, a title which only
Jean Monnet had received before.
*He is the second bearer of the "Bundesverdienstkreuz, of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, after
Konrad Adenauer.
*Kohl is honorary citizen of both
Frankfurt am Main and
Berlin, on
September 2, 2005 he was made honorary citizen of his home town,
Ludwigshafen.
*
The London Speaker Bureau{{Persondata
NAME=Kohl, Helmut | ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Dr. Helmut Josef Michael Kohl | SHORT DESCRIPTION=German Chancellor of Germany | DATE OF BIRTH=April 3, 1930 | PLACE OF BIRTH=Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Palatinate, Germany | DATE OF DEATH= | PLACE OF DEATH=
|
