Helmut Kohl
Helmut Kohl was Chancellor of West Germany and then of a reunified Germany from 1982 to 1998, the longest tenure since Bismarck, and the politician who drove both German unification and the single currency. Born in Ludwigshafen in 1930, he was conscripted into an anti-aircraft auxiliary unit at fifteen in the last months of the war, and his elder brother was killed in it. He took a doctorate in history, worked in industry, and rose through the Christian Democratic Union in Rhineland-Palatinate, becoming its minister-president in 1969 at thirty-nine. He was underestimated throughout his career as provincial and unsophisticated. He became chancellor in October 1982 when the Free Democrats switched partners mid-parliament, and won an election the following year. When the Berlin Wall opened in November 1989 he moved with speed that startled his allies, publishing a ten-point plan for confederation within weeks without consulting them. He secured Mikhail Gorbachev's agreement to a united Germany inside NATO, largely through personal negotiation and substantial financial aid, and overcame the reluctance of Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand. Unification was completed on 3 October 1990, less than eleven months after the wall opened. He converted the East German mark at one to one for savings, which was economically indefensible and politically necessary, and the promise of blooming landscapes in the east was not met; the transfers cost well over a trillion euros. He and Mitterrand drove the Maastricht Treaty and the euro, which Germans did not want and which he regarded as the price of unification. He lost in 1998, and his reputation was damaged by an illegal party donations scandal. He died in 2017.
- Lived: 1930 CE – 2017 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: Chancellor of West Germany / Germany (1982–98)
