Merkel praises Kohl: “Think the unthinkable, the unimaginable” – politics

One might think that the opening ceremony of a “Chancellor Helmut Kohl Foundation” is all about Helmut Kohl. The veritable “rush” to this event, reported by the Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Volker Kauder, does not quite match the results of the Foundation’s first commissioned scientific work. According to this, general interest in cabbage is dwindling and 16 percent of 15 to 25-year-old Germans no longer even know the man by name. And so the suspicion is obvious: there is something else behind the rush. Or rather, another.

It is even quite obvious that the French Cathedral in Berlin was filled to the last seat on Tuesday evening not only because of the former chancellor, who died in 2017, but also because of the rare opportunity to experience the former chancellor, who at best sporadically emerged from invisibility. You don’t have to have missed Angela Merkel too badly to be able to say in the end: It was worth listening to her again.

In her cheerful to cloudy speech, Merkel listed “three principles of political statecraft” that she had learned from Kohl: namely “the importance of the personal in politics, the unconditional will to shape things and thinking in historical contexts.” This is also worth considering in the current situation, said Merkel.

Merkel warns that the words of the Russian President should be taken seriously

Now, however, Angela Merkel, in her role as former Chancellor, is very careful not to comment on day-to-day political issues, possibly also because the current war-related energy crisis is not least the result of her term in office. So Merkel hid her comments on war and peace in a rhetorical ploy. Namely in her answer to the question she raised herself as to how Chancellor Kohl would act in 2022. She believes, said Merkel, that Kohl would “do everything in his power to protect and restore Ukraine’s sovereignty and integrity.”

At the same time, he would never lose sight of “the day after” when it comes to issues of this magnitude. Helmut Kohl, Merkel went on to explain her thought experiment, would “always also think about what is currently so unthinkable, almost unimaginable – namely how something like relations with and with Russia can be developed again”.

And then, at the most surprising point in her presentation, she voluntarily spoke about her relationship with Vladimir Putin. She has said before that the words of the Russian President should be taken seriously. And she was now explicitly referring to Putin’s recent nuclear threats. Merkel said: “Taking words seriously, not dismissing them from the outset, they are just a bluff, but dealing with them seriously, that is by no means a sign of weakness or appeasement, but a sign of political wisdom.” All in all, that sounded more like SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s deliberative course than CDU leader Friedrich Merz’s arms delivery rhetoric.

Merz had previously held a greeting and was sitting in the front row in the audience when Merkel spoke. At some point in between, the two of them gave each other a quick nod. But when the event broke up, they missed the opportunity for small talk. If not mistaken, they didn’t even say goodbye. Merz and Merkel were never friends. They weren’t that night either.

It’s amazing enough that they were in a room at all on behalf of the Unit Chancellor again. The last known meeting between Friedrich Merz and Angela Merkel took place in mid-February on the occasion of the re-election of Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. At the CDU party conference in Hanover in early September, Merkel had asked for an apology, referring to her injured knee. Merz, on the other hand, described Germany’s gas dependency on Russia as “great political stupidity” in his party conference speech. Best regards to the long-serving chancellor.

Kohl’s widow claims sole authority to interpret the former Chancellor

If the Kohl Foundation were to succeed in bringing Merz and Merkel together regularly from now on and thus reconciling the past of the CDU with its present to some extent, then it would have fulfilled one of the foundation’s purposes, even if perhaps not the one originally intended.

But that might be difficult anyway. The German Bundestag decided to establish the Kohl Foundation in May 2021 and provided it with an annual budget of 2.9 million euros to commemorate Helmut Kohl’s great achievements (German unity, European integration) on the one hand, but also his dark sides on the other (Party donation affair, slush funds) to be scientifically processed. Kohl as an ambivalent figure of contemporary history, that was the original plan. But naïve Christian Democratic spirits had apparently forged it without Kohl’s second wife Maike Kohl-Richter.

Merkel advised in her speech to take Putin’s words seriously. “This is by no means a sign of weakness or appeasement.”

(Photo: Christoph Soeder/dpa)

It is now well known that the 58-year-old widow and sole heiress claims sole authority over the former Federal Chancellor. The foundation explicitly does not have its blessing. On the occasion of the founding event, Kohl-Richter renewed her demand that the foundation’s work be “ceased or the foundation’s name changed”. In writing, she said she would regret it if she followed through on her announcement “and also had to file a lawsuit against this foundation.” Judging by what has happened between Maike Kohl-Richter and the CDU in the past few years, Merz and Merkel have actually always gotten along well.

The establishment of such a memorial foundation follows, so to speak, customary law. Three other outstanding chancellors of post-war history – Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt – were honored in this way after their deaths. In Kohl’s case, however, the circumstances surrounding the founding of the foundation are more agonizing than usual. This was preceded by years of wrangling between Richter-Kohl and the CDU over the composition of the board of trustees, the location of the foundation and a mountain of files.

The foundation remains a fairly “empty box”

In the future, the German Bundestag will provide the foundation with rooms in one of its properties, the Otto-Wels-Haus Unter den Linden, which are to be prepared for this purpose by 2025. The presumably most exciting Leitz folders from Kohl’s personal estate will remain in the care of Maike Kohl-Richter in Oggersheim for the time being. And the foundation remains a fairly “empty box”, as Union circles feared some time ago.

A critical appraisal of Kohl is therefore hardly possible and if you understood the Chairman of the Board of Trustees Kauder correctly on Tuesday on Deutschlandfunk, it is no longer intended at all. As the name suggests, the Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl Foundation deals with his work as Federal Chancellor, i.e. with the period from 1982 to 1998. The party donation scandal of 1999 “really” plays no role here, said Kauder.

At the festive evening event in the French Cathedral, nobody really dared to criticize Helmut Kohl. Neither do Merkel and Merz, who have one thing in common – namely that their political careers picked up speed with the emancipation from the leaden late phase of the Kohl era. Volker Kauder said at the conciliatory end to Merkel and Merz: “We will take away from this evening, it will be worth talking to you in the future.” It remains to be seen whether it will be worthwhile to set up this foundation.

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