Helmut Kohl’s family drama: That says star boss Gregor Peter Schmitz

Editorial

When Florian Illies, born in 1971, proclaimed the “Generation Golf” in book form in 2000, I, born in 1975, was irritated. I had little to do with golf, neither with the car nor with the sport. Would Illies have appealed to me more if he had chosen “Generation Kohl” as the headline? After all, I had to be 23 years old before I consciously noticed someone other than Helmut Kohl in the Chancellery, Gerhard Schröder.

The pear caricatures from Kohl’s era, the hatred of “Spiegel” or those strange pig stomach rumblings didn’t stick with me so much. In my mind’s eye, the (obviously staged) harmony pictures of the Kohl family appear more, whether at the holiday lake or feeding the fawns. They were normal for this time of the Bonn or even Oggersheim Republic. But even in my inexperienced person I had a feeling that something might not be right. In the years that followed, we also saw the destruction of Kohl’s family idyll – with a woman who committed suicide because of her serious illness, with two sons who publicly accused their father of withdrawing from love, probably because he found the party family so much more exciting as his own.

Behind great politicians are people

Kai Diekmann, editor-in-chief of “Bild” for a long time, was already at Kohl’s side as a journalist and later accompanied him to his death. Diekmann is a party, he leaves no doubt about that – he considers the Kohl sons to be bloodsuckers who let their father put up with them and who only ever cared about money. And he is firmly at the side of Maike Kohl-Richter, the second wife, who the sons never accepted. Diekmann has devoted an entire chapter to the drama in the Kohl household in his new book “I was BILD”, which will be published on May 11. We are printing this excerpt, as well as a text by our long-standing author Ulrike Posche, who wrote for the star conducted the last interview with Helmut Kohl and Maike Kohl-Richter. And we gave Helmut Kohl’s son Walter the opportunity to comment, who is quoted in Diekmann’s notes with the remarkable sentence that the name Kohl is like “a Jewish star”. Walter Kohl did not feel able to answer our questions by the time this issue went to press, but attests Diekmann’s text that it contained false statements of fact at various points and was altogether defamatory.

Why are we drawing this portrait of a German politician family? Not out of voyeurism. But because it could serve as a reminder that even the greatest politicians are backed by people, families. And that it does something to them when politics becomes a full-time sport. If we all had more understanding for this, the staging of family would no longer have to be so sticky. After all: Gerhard Schröder staged a lot, but not his family. Not Angela Merkel anyway – and questions about his private life are taboo for Olaf Scholz. Is that also a lesson from the Kohl years? Perhaps.

Robert Habeck would not even proclaim a “Habeck generation”, even if his ambition cannot be denied. After all, this man has spoken openly about how the Green People’s Party could become – and that Habeck wants to become his party’s candidate for chancellor in the next election campaign is an open secret. But first he has to face the toughest credibility battle of his career. What happened in terms of nepotism in his ministry is not a Watergate scandal. It’s normal felt. But that’s perhaps even worse for Habeck, because the Greens never wanted to become a normal party. And then there are party friends who gleefully eye Habeck’s difficulties. Because even with the Greens, the increase in mortal enemy means: party friend. Or: chancellor candidacy competitor. Or: Chancellor candidacy competitor.