Helmut Kohl

Born in 1946 to a Catholic family in Ludwigshafen, Kohl joined the Christian Democratic Union at 16, earned a PhD in history from Heidelberg in 1958, and rose through regional politics to become minister president of Rhineland-Palatinate by 1969. He took the CDU chairmanship in 1973 - progressive early on, more conservative as leader - and after two strong but losing federal campaigns, became chancellor in 1982 through a constructive vote of no confidence when the liberal FDP abandoned Helmut Schmidt. He tied himself to Reagan's hardline Soviet stance and to deeper European integration with France, then when the revolutions of 1989 cracked the Eastern Bloc open, moved fast: German reunification came in 1990. With François Mitterrand he engineered the Maastricht Treaty, which erected the EU and the euro, pushed for recognition of the breakaway Yugoslav republics, and helped broker an end to the Bosnian War. His government relocated the capital from Bonn back to Berlin, though the move finished only after he left office in 1998. A donations scandal two years later forced him from the CDU honorary chairmanship and tarnished him at home, but abroad the tributes held: th