Helmut Kohl

Dr. Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (lahir 3 April 1930) adalah politisi konservatif Katolik Jerman dan statesman. Ia menjabat Kanselir Jerman dari tahun 1982 sampai 1998 (Jerman Barat hanya dari 1982 dan 1990). Ia juga seorang ketua (chairman) Uni Demokratik Kristen atau CDU: Christian Democratic Union) pada periode 1973-1998. Pada tahun 2004, ketika tengah berlibur di Maladewa, ia hampir saja menjadi korban tsunami.

Berkas:Helmut kohl.jpeg

Helmut Kohl

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:

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 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.

Political Views

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.

Public perception

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.-->

Didahului oleh: Helmut Schmidt	Kanselir Jerman 1982–1998	Diteruskan oleh: Gerhard Schröder
Didahului oleh: Margaret Thatcher	Chair G-8 1985	Diteruskan oleh: Yasuhiro Nakasone
Didahului oleh: John Major	Chair G-8 1992	Diteruskan oleh: Kiichi Miyazawa