persons
CDU: Kohl’s long-time office manager Juliane Weber is dead
It was said again and again that no one came past her who wanted to talk to Kohl: Juliane Weber, here in her study in Bonn in November 1979. Photo
© Heinrich Sanden/dpa
It was said again and again that no one came past her who wanted to talk to Kohl. Juliane Weber was considered the strong woman in the background. She has now died at the age of 84.
The long-time office manager of Helmut Kohl (CDU), Juliane Weber died on Saturday in Bonn at the age of 84. The federal CDU in Berlin confirmed a corresponding report in the “Bild” newspaper on Wednesday. Weber was long considered a close confidante of then-Chancellor Kohl, who died in 2017.
Weber had looked after Kohl’s personal office for decades and accompanied him loyally and secretly at many stations – from the state parliament in Mainz to the then Chancellery in Bonn. After Kohl became a member of the Bundestag following the 1998 federal election, she followed him to Berlin. “There are only two people who know everything about me,” Helmut Kohl is said to have once said. “My wife and Juliane.”
There wasn’t much concrete information about the native of Lower Saxony even during Kohl’s time. Her passion for elephants made of glass, stone and precious metal, which adorned her desk, is said in a portrait by Weber at the time. It was said again and again that no one came past her who wanted to talk to Kohl. Juliane Weber was considered the strong woman in the background, loyal to the point of self-sacrifice, but conscious of power like Kohl himself. She once said in a newspaper interview: “The worst thing in my life would be not to take part.”