When the assassin Dieter Kaufmann shot Wolfgang Schäuble on October 12, 1990, the CDU politician was already a fixture in federal politics. As Interior Minister under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, the lawyer Schäuble was considered one of the architects of German reunification. starReporter Hans Peter Schütz was on site that day in Oppenau, Baden. He watched the assassin, heard the shots, and later saw Schäuble lying on the ground, shot down. A few days later he wrote about his experiences in staron whose front page the picture of the injured politician ends up, taken by star-Photographer Cornelius Meffert.
But Schäuble’s political career did not end with the attack. Just a few months later, stern reporters visited Schäuble in Ellmendingen, Baden, and then reported on the “second life” that had now begun for him. There was no sign of resignation from Schäuble at the time, on the contrary. And things actually continued to look up for the politician in the 1990s.
At the beginning of 1997, Wolfgang Schäuble was back on the front page of star. Before the 1998 federal election, Helmut Kohl’s political foster son made no secret of his intention to succeed the long-time chancellor in his office. But things turned out differently, Kohl wanted to know it a fifth time – and lost power to Gerhard Schröder and the SPD.
When the CDU’s donation scandal was exposed in 1999, Schäuble briefly made it to the top of his party; But at the beginning of 2000, he too fell victim to his involvement in the black money scandal surrounding the arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber. This not only meant that Schäuble’s path to the Chancellery was blocked, but his friendship with Helmut Kohl also did not survive the political turbulence.
In his book “Mitten im Leben” in the fall of 2000, Schäuble settled accounts with Kohl – the first excerpts from the book were published exclusively at the time star. Even in his later years, the conservative politician repeatedly gave the magazine intimate insights into his private life and his political thinking.