Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl died on June 16. He was 87 years old.
Kohl was chancellor from 1982 to 1998. His time at the pinnacle of leadership expired 20 years ago, long enough to disappear from the political zeitgeist. Yet Kohl is a towering figure even among Germany’s youth, because he was the leader who guided the historic unification of the two Germanys in 1989-1990.
In other European countries Kohl, who was ousted as the Christian Democratic Union’s leader in 1998 by the young Angela Merkel, faded from view. Few young people anywhere in Europe know much about Kohl. Americans of all ages naturally have little idea about him.
Obituaries and commentaries rightly stressed his incomparable role in German unification. Kohl’s autobiography puts it at the core of his life. It’s called Ich Wollte Deutschlands Einheit, “I wanted Germany’s unification.” Without Kohl’s determination and skill, and without support from U.S. President George H. W. Bush and the exceptional French leader Francois Mitterrand, the collapse of East Germany, of all Eastern European Communism, and of the Soviet Union itself could have been an uncontrolled spiral into chaos.
What escaped mention in the memorials was Germany’s underlying political stability, a factor in which Kohl is also of great significance. Kohl’s term in office was but one of three remarkably long chancellorships since the Federal Republic was founded in 1949, as the Cold War developed and the former Germany became divided into the communist East and the democratic West.
Today’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, is now in her 12th year, having reached office in 2005. West Germany’s founding Chancellor Konrad Adenauer served from 1949 to 1963.
The time spent in office by these three powerhouses of German politics accounts for nearly half of the Federal Republic's 68-year history. Each provided for postwar Germany more than a decade of stability.
Moreover, they were all from the Christian-Democratic Party.
When the other two CDU chancellors are included (Ludwig Erhard, 1963-1966, and Kurt Kiesinger, 1966-1969), Christian Democrats have run Germany’s governments for 47 of 68 years.
Merkel is running for re-election in September. If she wins another four-year term, as she looks poised to do, five CDU leaders will have presided over the federal government for more than 50 of the 72 years since its founding as West Germany.
The other major party, the German Social Democratic Party, has provided the Federal Republic with three chancellors: Willy Brandt (1969-1974), Helmut Schmidt (1974-1982), and Gerhard Schroeder (1998-2005). Americans won’t find these Social Democratic terms unusually long since the informal expectation for an American president is two terms totaling eight years.
However, in many parliamentary systems, especially in Mediterranean Europe, governments can rise and fall and prime ministers change with dizzying rapidity.
Germany’s governing stability has had another anchor. Three times election results were inconclusive, threatening the emergence of minority governments or of governments involving unreliable smaller parties. Each of these times, a so-called grand coalition has joined in governance the two major parties, the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. From 1966 to 1969 Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger headed such a government. The other two involved Merkel, first from 2005 to 2009, and the current one since 2013.
Germany’s powerful economy also stabilized the country. German monetary policy during the deutsche mark decades was marked by a strong mark -- a hard currency that benefited German consumers. Strong productivity growth and high-quality goods nevertheless produced strong exports -- thus creating a trade surplus -- and a focus on domestic savings. In the years following the euro crisis, Merkel’s emphasis on austerity as the way to deal with debt may have been misguided, but in any case illustrated traditional German thinking.
The strong deutsche mark had a larger significance. In the decades after World War II it became a symbol of national pride, a kind of patriotism like Germany’s national soccer team, a surrogate for Germany’s flag that seemed to signal latent German nationalism. The strong mark prevented the kind of runaway inflation that had crashed the Weimar Republic’s economy and paved the way for Hitler’s rise to power.
A final element of economic stability was the social market economy, a system combining market economics with a strong welfare state. By law, on German corporate boards a tripartite mitbestimmung, or co-determination, structure that united management, labor union, and government representatives in shared decision-making. It amounted to a kind of domestic economic peace treaty unthinkable in France or other Mediterranean countries.
It was always self-evident why Germans became so attached to the stabilizers, why labor and management acceptance of mitbestimmung worked. Never again would war originate on German soil, was the idea.
A Return to Europe
Stability and solid governance is why the election of Emmanuel Macron, a strong pro-Europe president, is so significant for Europe as well as France. It has renewed the Franco-German solidity that sits at the core of European integration and has reinvigorated intra-European international strength based on the traditional division of responsibilities: German economic heft and French political and diplomatic leadership. Berlin governments do not want to stand out, while the opposite is true for Paris.
A final aspect is postwar Germany’s sense of responsibility in human terms, another rejection of Germany’s unspeakable Nazi past. That rejection could be seen in practice: through postwar West Germany and today’s unified Federal Republic’s stalwart support of Israel, as well as through the former West Germany’s costly integration of millions of East Germans.
A third example is Merkel’s decision to accept 1 million-plus Syrian war refugees. She said this was a simple question of human succor, a responsibility to rescue. One year on, her government and the German population’s attitude has made it work, whatever problems have arisen.
Only Germany could have taken in the Syrian refugees, logistically and politically. France, with a low-growth economy, far-right mobilization of anti-foreigner, anti-immigration sentiments, and the country’s obsession about its existing Muslim minority, certainly couldn’t have risked any kind of open-door policy.
Postwar Germany’s stability, its support of European integration, and its sense of responsibility for human rights are essential aspects of contemporary Europe’s history, just as the memory of the Nazi regime must remain part of Germany’s and Europe’s collective memory.
Helmut Kohl and the earlier German leaders, and Angela Merkel for the last decade, deserve immense credit.
