Profile of Helmut Kohl on Famous Like Me

Helmut Kohl

Order:	32nd Chancellor of Germany (6th of the Federal Republic)
Term of Office:	1 October 1982–27 October 1998
Predecessor:	Helmut Schmidt
Successor:	Gerhard Schröder
Date of Birth:	3 April 1930
Political Party:	CDU
Profession:	Historian

Dr. Helmut Kohl (full name Helmut Josef Michael Kohl) (born 3 April 1930) is a German conservative politician and statesman. He was Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998 (West Germany between 1982 and 1990) and also the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973-1998. His 16-year tenure was the second longest of any German chancellor, behind only Otto von Bismarck.

Early Life

Born in Ludwigshafen, Germany, to a Catholic and conservative family, Kohl participated in the late stage of World War II as a teenage soldier.

Political Career

Kohl joined the CDU in 1947. He then went on to earn a doctorate (ph.d.) in history. From 1969-1976 he was Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate state. In 1976 he was elected to the Bundestag from that state, and became the leader of the CDU opposition against the coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Free Democratic Party of the time. He was the CDU's candidate for Chancellor in the 1976 and 1980 federal elections, both won by the SPD.

On October 1, 1982, he succeeded Helmut Schmidt as Chancellor by means of a constructive vote of no confidence, the only one in post-war German history that was successful to date. This came as the Free Democrats, led by Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher broke off their coalition with the Social Democrats. Genscher and Kohl were reportedly negotiating a coalition agreement as the vote occurred. Kohl was only elected by seven votes, and deliberately lost a motion of confidence in order to get a clearer majority. Polls indicated strong support for the CDU/CSU, and this was borne out in elections held in 1983, which delivered a smashing victory for Kohl. He was reelected in 1987 with a slightly reduced majority.

Especially in the earlier days of his tenure, Kohl faced stiff opposition from the German political left. His adversaries frequently referred to him by the widely known disparaging nickname of "Birne" (German word for pear; after unflattering cartoons showing Kohl's head as a pear). Such initially common public ridicule however subsided somewhat over time and in the later years of Kohl's tenure the moniker was rarely used anymore.

German reunification

Kohl is widely recognized even by some of his political adversaries for managing the process of German reunification that started with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, and formally completed on October 3, 1990.

Prior to reunification, Kohl followed the principles of Ostpolitik by welcoming a state visit by East German leader Erich Honecker in 1987. As communism in East Germany crumbled, Kohl persuaded the leadership of the Soviet Union to accept the idea of a reunited Germany remaining in the NATO alliance. Post-reunification elections were held in December 1990--the first free, fair and democratic all-German elections since the Nazi era--and Kohl won a crushing victory. He was reelected with a slightly reduced majority in 1994.

While not all has been well economically in Germany during and since his government, most people would agree that Kohl managed to convince international leaders that a unified Germany would represent no threat to its neighbors by tying German reunification with the tighter integration of Germany into the European Union.

Party funding scandal

Despite his earlier successes, Kohl's political heritage was, among others, damaged by a massive party financing scandal starting in 1999, when it was discovered that the CDU had received and maintained illegal funding under his leadership.

Investigations by the German Parliament into the sources of illegal CDU funds, mainly stored in Geneva bank accounts, revealed two sources:

1. Sales of German tanks to Saudi Arabia (kickback question),
2. 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 François Mitterrand, as it was usual practice in African countries.

In 2003 it became known that Kohl was paid 300,000 € (then 600,000 Deutsche Mark) by private television mogul Leo Kirch for an advisory contract. This became a rather delicate matter, considering the fact that Leo Kirch had only been put into the position to build his private television empire as a result of reforms championed by Helmut Kohl in the 1980s.

Defeat

By the late 1990s, the aura surrounding Kohl had largely worn off amid rising unemployment figures. Kohl came under considerable heat for underestimating the cost of reunification. In the 1998 elections, Kohl was heavily defeated by the Social Democrats and Greens under Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder. He immediately resigned as CDU leader and largely retired from politics.

Personal Life

Kohl has always been an intensely private person and the only real glimpse of his childhood has come from the recollections of his last-surviving sibling, Hildegard Getrey. Speaking to Stern magazine (13 September 1996), Mrs Getrey recalled a specific number of incidents from Helmut's youth. She claims that Kohl enjoyed pretending to be a bishop, which he would do by putting a teacosy on his head and draping a sheet over his shoulders. He would then have friends carry the ends of his make-believe robe while he walked around the family yard with a solemn expression. Mrs Getrey also says that Helmut once hypnotised a chicken into walking along a chalk line, but she did not reveal his technique. "He was always a wild boy," she said, "and he sometimes got a beating."

Kohl was married to the late Hannelore Kohl and has two sons from that marriage.

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.

Quotes

"I have been underestimated for decades. I've done very well that way."

"We never want to wage war again against each other. We want to honour the dead and tend to the graves but we never again want to have soldiers' tombs in Europe. That is the most important reason for a united Europe."

This content from Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Helmut Kohl