Helmut Kohl

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{{Infobox PM

| name=Helmut Kohl
| image=Helmut kohl.jpeg
| country-de=Germany
| term=1 October 1982–27 October 1998
| before=Helmut Schmidt
| after=Gerhard Schröder
| date_birth=April 3, 1930
| party=CDU

}}

Dr. Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (born April 3, 1930) is a 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. 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.

1 Life
2 Political Views
3 Public perception
- 3.1 Prizes
4 Trivia

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Life

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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. 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 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 joins 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.

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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 Politcal Parties after 1945". After that he entered business, first as a 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.

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Political Life

In 1960 he is eleced into the municipal council of Ludwigshafen in which he serves as leader of the CDU-party until 1969. In 1963 he is also elected into the Land legislature in Rhineland-Palatinate and serves as leader of the CDU-party in the legislature. From 1966 until 1973 he serves as chair of the CDU, and he is also member of the Federal board of the CDU. After his election as party-chair he is named as the successor of Peter Altmeier, the current minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate. After the following Landtag-election, Altmeier remains however minister-president.

On May 19, 1969 Kohl is elected minister-president of the Land Rheinland-Pfalz, as successor of Altmeier. During his minister-presidency Kohl founds the University of Trier-Kaiserslautern and reforms enacts territorial reforms. In the same year he also becomes vice-chair of the federal CDU party.

In 1971 he is candidate for the position of federal chairman but is not elected. Rainer Barzel takes the position. In 1972 Barzel attempts to force a cabinet crisis in the FDP/SPD government, after that fails he steps down. In 1973 Kohl succeeds him. He retains this position until November 7, 1998.

For the 1976 federal Elections, Kohl is the political leader and candidate chancellor of the CDU/CSU. The two parties perform very well and win 48,6% of the vote. They are nonetheless kept out of the centre-left cabinet formed by the social-democrat Schmidt. Kohl retires as minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate to become leader of the CDU/CSU-party in the Bundestag, he is succeded by Bernhard Vogel. In the 1980 federal elections, Kohl has to play second violin, when CSU-leader Franz Josef Strauß becomes the CDU/CSU chancellor candidate. Strauß is also kept out of government by the SPD/FDP alliance. Unlike Kohl, Strauß does not want to continue as leader of CDU/CSU parliamentary party and remain prime minister of Bavaria. Kohl remains leader of the opposition against second Schmidt cabinet.

On September 17, 1982 a conflict on economic policy between coalition partners SPD and FDP escalated. The FDP wanted to radically liberalize the labour market, while the SPD wanted to protect the rights of the workers. The FDP started talks with the CDU/CSU to form a new government. On September 20, these talks are finished. On October 1, 1982, the CDU proposed a constructive vote of no confidence, which was supported by the FDP. It should be noted was the only successful one of these motion in Germany to date. This caused the cabinet Schmidt II to fall, and brought a new cabinet to power, with Kohl as chancellor. This rise to power is somewhat controversial. Altough this new cabinet was legtimate according to the basic law of Germany, it lacked substantial legitimacy, because the FDP and CDU/CSU had entered the 1980 elections as opposing parties, not as allies. To answer this problem, Kohl did something more controversial. He forced the question of confidence on a minor point, during the vote in November 1982, members of the coalition partners abstained from voting, thereby causing the downfall of the government, and forcing the Federal president to disband the Federal parliament in January 1983. During the elections the FDP and CDU campaigned for a common government. The two parties won the federal elections of March 1983. with CDU/CSU winning 48.8% and the FDP winning 7.0%. Some members of parliament asked the Federal constitutional court to declare the disbanding of parliament to be unconstitutional. It denied their claim.

The second cabinet Kohl pushed trough 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".

Image:Mitterrand and Kohl in Verdun 1984.jpeg On the September 22 1984 Kohl met the French president François Mitterrand at Verdun, where a heavy battle between French and Germans had taken place during the First World War. Together they commemorated the deaths of both World Wars. The photograph, which depicted their minuteslong 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 remained in office and he formed his Cabinet Kohl III. Opposition candidate for the office of Chancellor was the Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Johannes Rau.

In 1987 he received East German leader Erich Honecker. This is generally seen as a sign that Kohl pursued Ostpolitik, a politics of detente between East and West.

Image:Helmut Kohl in Krzyzowa.jpg This politics changed after 1989: a turning point in Kohl's chancellary was the breach of the Berlin Wall. Kohl took advantage of the historic political changes occurring in the GDR by presenting 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 the GDR. Against the will of president of 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 "Winning Powers" of the Second World War to allow German reunification and the expansion of the NATO into the former GDR. On October 3, 1990 the German Democratic Republic was abolished and its territory reunified with West Germany.

After the 1990 elections — the first free, fair and democratic all-German elections since the Weimar Republic era — Kohl was re-elected as Chancellor, winning by a landslide from opposition candidate and prime-miniser 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 tied the powers of Kohl significantly. 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. The 1998 federal elections formed the end of Kohls reign, the minister-president of Niedersachsen, Gerhard Schröder, with a red-green alliance, replaced him as chancellor on October 27, 1998. He immediately resigned as CDU leader and largely retired from politics. Until 2002 Kohl remained member of the Bundestag.

Image:Kohlmerkel.jpeg

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Life after Politics

Kohl's life after politics is 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 chancellary (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.

Template:Christian Democracy

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Political Views

Kohl had strong political views, focussing on economic matters and on international politics.

Economically, Kohls political views and policies were inspired by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: reform of the welfare state, lowering taxation to allow individual initiative.
In international politics Kohl was committed to European integration, maintaining close relations with the French president Mitterand. Furthermore he was committed to German Reunification. Altough he continued the Ostpolitik of his social-democratic predecessor, Kohl also supported Reagan's more aggressive policies in order to weaken the USSR.

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Public perception

At the earlier years 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 (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. The prizes he received are testimony of this. Some critizes him for taking personal credit for German Reunification, while without historical developments in the USSR and the GDR in the late 1980s, reunification would not have been possible. After his chancellery, especially when the claims of corruption sprang up, Kohl fell in public perception.

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Prizes

In 1988 Kohl and Mitterand 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.