Helmut Kohl, RIP

Helmut Kohl, the German Chancellor who helped reunite Germany after the Berlin Wall came down, has passed away.  Chancellor Kohl served as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1982 to 1998 and was the longest serving chancellor.

When the Wall came down in November of 1989, Chancellor Kohl seized the moment.  He recognized, along with President George H.W. Bush, that there was a narrow window of opportunity, which could allow freedom to come to Eastern Europe and unity to come to Germany – peacefully. 

President Bush and Chancellor Kohl, and others, including West German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher and U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, worked together to accomplish something that nobody, six months before, thought was possible.

Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, had already started letting the countries of Eastern Europe go their own way in certain areas.  What Helmut Kohl and George Bush accomplished was to convince General Secretary Gorbachev that the Soviet Union would be better off with Germany united and a member of NATO, than two states in Germany or a Germany forced to be on its own in the middle of Europe.

Germany united and allowed to freely choose to stay a part of NATO was an accomplishment of historic proportions.  Because it seemed to happen so easily and peacefully, the extent of that accomplishment is not appreciated today. 

Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, lies buried beneath the floor of St. Paul’s.  There is no fancy monument to him, just the simple statement above where he lies, written by his son: 

“Here in its foundations lies the architect of this church and city, Christopher Wren, who lived beyond ninety years, not for his own profit but for the public good.  Reader, if you seek his monument – look around you.”

Much the same could be said of Helmut Kohl.  I do not know if a monument will be built to Chancellor Kohl.  But there doesn’t need to be one.  If you want to see his monument, go to Berlin, go to any city in old East Germany, and look around you.  The united country you see is Helmut Kohl’s monument.

Here is a picture I took when we visited Berlin in December of 2010.  It is called the “Fathers of German Unity”: George H.W. Bush, Helmut Kohl, and Mikhail Gorbachev.  It is outside the offices of the Axel Springer SE publishing company, right next to where the Wall used to be.

-----------
UPDATE (6/16/17 12:02 pm): I changed the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph to more accurately state my point.