Germany’s former chancellor Helmut Kohl has died at the age of 87.
Kohl, described as the father of German reunification and an architect of European integration, died in his house in Ludwigshafen.
Germany’s longest serving post-war chancellor from 1982 to 1998, he left active politics in 2002.
He served longer than Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first post-World War II chancellor and his political idol. Only Otto von Bismarck, who first unified Germany in the 1870s, was chancellor longer, for 19 years.
He was a driving force behind the introduction of the European single currency, convincing sceptical Germans to give up the Deutsche Mark.
In the UK, he is remembered for his differences over the EU with the late UK Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.
Kohl had been frail and wheelchair-bound since suffering a bad fall in 2008.
The end of his career was blighted by economic problems in the old East Germany and a financial scandal within his own Christian Democratic Union party.
He combined a dogged pursuit of European unity with a keen instinct for history following the November 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. Kohl spearheaded, less than a year later, the end of Germany’s division at the front line of the Cold War.
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton once described Kohl as “the most important European statesman since World War II.”
He added: “The 21st century in Europe really began on his watch”, describing him as “a man who was big in more than physical stature.”
Former US President George HW Bush paid tribute to the man he knew while in office from 1989 to 1993.
“Barbara and I mourn the loss of a true friend of freedom, and the man I consider one of the greatest leaders in post-war Europe…”, he wrote in a statement.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, on Friday, voiced “deep sorrow over a great German and a great European”.
Merkel’s chancellery chief-of-staff, Peter Altmaier, said that “we owe an infinite debt to Helmut Kohl: for our freedom, for our unity, for our Europe.”
Kohl’s Christian Democratic Union Party posted on Twitter: “We are in sorrow. RIP Helmut Kohl.”
European Commission chief, Jean-Claude Juncker, paid tribute to Kohl, describing him as the “very essence of Europe.”
“Helmut’s death hurts me deeply. My mentor, my friend, the very essence of Europe, he will be greatly, greatly missed,” former Luxembourg premier Juncker said on Twitter.
The former chancellor was married for 41 years to Hannelore Renner, an interpreter of English and French, who stood firmly but discreetly by his side throughout his political life. They had two sons, Peter and Walter.
In July 2001, Hannelore killed herself at age 68 in despair over an incurable allergy to light. In 2005, Kohl introduced his new partner Maike Richter, an economist, some 35 years his junior. The couple married in May 2008.
Born on April 3, 1930, in Ludwigshafen, a western industrial city on the Rhine, Kohl joined the Hitler Youth but missed service in the Nazi army.
As a 15-year-old, he was almost pressed into service in a German anti-aircraft gun unit when World War II ended. His oldest brother, Walter, was killed in action a few months earlier.
A Roman Catholic, Kohl joined the CDU in his teens shortly after its postwar founding. He earned his doctorate in 1958 at the University of Heidelberg with a dissertation on the politics of Rhineland-Palatinate and became governor of that western state in 1969.
His first attempt to unseat Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt failed in 1976, but Kohl seized his chance six years later.
Late Kohl 