AMN
Former Germany chancellor Helmut Kohl died. he was 87 He died at his house in Ludwigshafen, in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate.
Having led Germany for 16 years, he is remembered for reuniting the country as well as for making a huge political and economic contribution to the integration of Europe.
Helmut Kohl’s political party the Christian Democratic Union on Friday confirmed media reports that the former chancellor had died.
Kohl led Germany for 16 years – from 1982 to 1998. He is credited with bringing East and West Germany together after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Together with his French ally President Francois Mitterrand, he was responsible for the introduction of the euro.
Kohl, who led the centre-right Christian Democrats, was the longest-serving German chancellor of the 20th Century. In the UK, he is remembered for his differences over the EU with the late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Helmut Josef Michael Kohl was born in Ludwigshafen on April 3, 1930. He was only 17 when he joined the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and was active in the party during his studies in History, Law and Governance and Public Policy.
Kohl was elected premier of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1969. At just 39, he was the youngest person ever to hold the position. In 1976, the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), choose him as their candidate for chancellor in the parliamentary elections. He won 48.6 percent of the vote, but that still was not enough to keep Helmut Schmidt’s Social Democrats (SPD) from staying in power in a coalition with the free-market liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).
It was not until six years later, on October 1, 1982, that Kohl finally reached his goal. The leader of the opposition, which also had the largest number of seats in the German parliament, was voted in as chancellor.