Born in Hamburg in 1918. He died in his home, five years after the death of his wife, Loki, the love of his life. They met when they were 10. They married while he was on leave from the Russian front. They were married for 68 years.
He said he did not want to be a 100 but there was nothing he could do about that.
He was a soldier, a publicist, a politician, a philosopher, an intellectual, a simple man, curious, a chess player, an organist, a life-long social democrat, leader of the Spd, German Chancellor. An outstanding German of the Federal Republic.
He came to attention as a crisis manager in the disastrous floods in Hamburg in 1962.
On the occasion of the hijacking of the Lufthansa plane at Mogadishu, Chancellor Schmidt left a note that should he or his wife be kidnapped the State was not to change its policy.
Herbert Werner, Willi Brandt, Helmut Schmidt, the troika, the men who led the Spd in significant years of the Federal Republic.
But it is also so that he was never fully or greatly trusted in his own party.
Schmidt is the last of the three to die.
The end of an era.
The extract below is from today's Spiegel Online
Es gibt in diesem Land nur wenige, die bei allen Deutschen Respekt genießen, egal welcher politischen Richtung, egal welcher gesellschaftlichen Strömung. Sollte diese kleine Gruppe einen Anführer gehabt haben, dann war es Helmut Schmidt. Selbst wer anderer Ansicht war als er, früher zur Aufrüstung oder jüngst zum Umgang mit Russland, musste Schmidts Urteil respektieren, und teilte er es nicht, dann musste er schon genau begründen können, warum. Denn Schmidts Wort hatte Gewicht.
2 comments:
There are lots of interesting quotes from him, i.e.:
"The human rights are a creation of the western civilization - the bible doesn't mention them at all. Same thing with the Islam..."
He had no religious convictions but blamed clerics -Catholic, Protestant, Islamic - for the intolerance he identified between Christianity and Islam.
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