Helms Kohli, the man who grew up from dream of a united Europe

Shortly after the noon of the first day of a hot month for a piece of Europe, but not for Strasbourg, one of the symbol cities of a united Europe, a period of difficult post-war time and architect of “Ode to Joy”, Helm Cohl, was given the latest goodbyes under a magnificent ceremony in the European Parliament's hall by the greatest leaders of the world, while Angela and Emmanou Macronegi.

Late in the afternoon, at approximately 6:00, while thousands of ordinary Germans were lined up along the banks of the Rin River to bid their last farewell to the man who was to be remembered among them, among other things, for the fatherly style of the German mountain, the ark with Kohli's body would arrive at his hometown, in Speyer to rest forever near the cathedral of the city.

Helmut Kohl, who died at 87 years of age, was not just one of the longest-lived German post-war Chancellors and four-time election winners from 1982 to 1998. Kohl was and remained the most beloved and close statesman to the Germans, despite their being laughing at his not-too-looking, protruding sweaters, strong local excise, and the habit of stretching out to different statesmen whenever they visited his favorite plate; that of the pigback, transforming this huge giant even from his physical appearance, to a very extraordinary man, even to Germany. In 1976, when this kind of strange and uncosmopolitan politician arrived in Bonn as a new CDU leader in Bundestag, neither did he himself think that his ambitions to enter history would soon be the claims of a European one, which more than anyone else would perceive with foresight the creation of the “a European Germany rather than a German Evrope<18x1>. For Helmut Kohl, it seems that the events that Germany experienced on the eve of the collapse of communism were the ones that created other humans inside it, more than the opposite.

Franz Josef Strauss, the other bavarez leader, but his opponent in conviction, just as charismatic, controversial, contourous, even in his exploits, said the opposite was true. Helmut Kohl was unlikely to enter history, even declaring shortly before the 1976 elections that he was not suitable for the Chancellor's office. “He is completely incapacitated”, declared Strauss at a conference in Munich. That man lacks character, intellectual and political qualifications as well. He misses everything”. The opposite actually proved true, and it happens with politicians of this race. Kohl, who very skillfully turned his image from unpaved maze to another portrait, to “the people's son” and arrived not after many battles to win successive victories in almost all elections that took place every four years. I've been underestimated for decades. He liked to repeat it every time in the conversation. But here I was, just struggling to be what I am, without being changed at all”

Born in one of the suburbs of Ludwigshafen am Rhein in southern Germany, Kohl was the third child of a modest Catholic family. Helmut Joseph Michael Kohl was well - grown enough to remember his life under Hitler's Germany, but young enough to flee from an unexpected Nazi attack in which an older brother lost his life.

After the war, he attended university, the first in his family, studying law first and then political science. His doctor was a topic on the reconstruction of post-war political parties in the country's home, in Rhinoland-Palatinate. Although he worked for a while in business, politics remained one of his passions. In 1946, when he was only 16, he joined the youth wing of the CDU, a newly established political force in postwar Germany.

Young Kohl spent the next 20 years of his career between the local policy corridors when suddenly, in 1969, he manages to elect Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate. He was the first prime minister elected at such a young age to govern a federal land, but that was not enough. He worked hard on it to become a national factor as a liberal reformer within his party. West Germany and the leader who were preparing to be more charismatic than needed had already built the kohl “system of government, providing a lot of favour under difficult political conditions for many who would then support its policies. It was this system that turned it into an invincible political factoring machine, demanding, above all, firm loyalty. The 1980s recognized the calmest situation for the German-Western.

They were wealthy citizens of one of the most powerful countries in the economic plan on the continent. And to begin with, Kohl generously rewarded his voters by narrowing unemployment, adding benefits to the mother and the newborn child, and returning early retirement as an attractive financial option. On the other hand, he was not even afraid to make antipopular decisions, such as. against an opposition, which in the spirit of idealism for a pacifist Germany opposed the deployment of NATO nuclear missiles to German soil. This was one of the first bold moves he took in German foreign policy. But he certainly was not alone in this move. Francois Mitterran, the French president with whom Kohl had a special relationship in implementing the platform of “Ode to Joy”, via a Franco-German project, was always on his side.

We remember here in 1984, when both of these men, Europe's most powerful, shook hands on each other in Verdun, on land where one of the most dangerous French-German battles took place, a move that strongly confirmed reconciliation between the two countries. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was the next event that made his star shine more on the political career. Helm Kohl is restored to the center of the world political scene. There is no doubt that he, like most Germans, looked forward to the fall of the communist regime. So as a native politician, shortly before the wall fell, he had made a determined cavalry movement. He invited with much humility from a great statesman, Erich Honecker, the communist leader of East Germany, to Bonn. This remained the first and last visit of a top East German statesman to the other side of Germany.

And the star still had a lot of ways to go towards full glory. In May 1990, following an incident that took place between a counterpart in the East and left there, Helmut Kohl quickly signed an agreement with East Germany that led to the acceleration of the union between two countries of a large nation. On October 3, East Germany ceased to exist. After about a decade, the West had carried out its mission to save half the continent from atheistic Bolsevism. Europe truly lived half of it under the hostages that left communism behind, but the mission was successfully completed. In 1998, the star of Kohl, in a less than - satisfying economic situation especially in terms of unemployment figures, stopped shining. He was severely defeated in this year's elections by the Social Democrats of Gerhard Schroeder. While a year later, he was involved in a serious financial scandal within his party, charging that he had accepted anonymous donations of up to 2 million deutschmarks, whose source he, with the stubbornness of a titanium, refused to disclose.

Time in his personality carried a deeply firm belief in himself, hating the detail, a not so unusual combination of great but still very dangerous leaders. He was a politician who wrote biographers who considered himself equal to the great German prince Otto von Bismarck, even becoming a humane. In 2000, he resigned as leader of the CDU. His successor, Angela Merkel, secretly selected, writes foreign press in that country, of course initially by him, pushed Helm Cohli towards an immediate public exit, warning that the CDU from here should move forward without fear, but without its “cal battle”. A year later, his wife Hannelore committed suicide. Kohl, who never forgot or forgave even a minor ignoring, withdrew from politics living a boring pension.

Helmus Kohl, the most talented virtuoso who has known the real European policy, would be distinguished from others for his particular sense of combining reality and passion. He finished his life, wrote close sources next to him, living a world much like what Lewis Carroll described in his children's novel “Lisa in the wonder world”. The great and good giant, Kohl, how will they remember during the humble Germans constantly accuse the small “of the East”, Angela Merkel, of her bad end, of her strength based on the principles, rules and technical means of solving problems or the very close ties she had established with other European leaders, whom Kohl had treated so carefully. “Sie macht mein Europe kaput”, “it is destroying my Europe” constantly complained. Although people around him tried hard to cure once again the fragile figure that left behind the financial scandal that was involved in shame, history remained the same as Humpty Dumpty's in strange stories in Lisa's dreams, where nothing could be remade from the beginning.