If you were going to write a play about the History of Post-World War II Europe, one of the main characters in it would have to be Helmut Kohl, the Chancellor of Germany from 1982 to 1998. Mr. Kohl died today at the age of 87 and although his career in politics ending on a sour note it would be impossible and indeed irresponsible not to credit the man who was a key participant in two of the biggest events in the last three decades of Europe’s history. The first of these events was the reunification of East and West Germany after a near fifty year split due to the Cold War waged between the Communist bloc led by the Soviet Union, and the Democratic bloc led by the United States. The most notable symbol of this conflict that Kohl had to contend with was the ugly concrete slab in the heart of Berlin, the Berlin Wall, but as ugly as that was the reunification process was it’s opposite in terms of swiftness (although Eastern Germany, as well as Eastern Europe in general, is less prosperous than their Western neighbors in terms of Gross Domestic Product per Capita).
The second major event that Kohl took center stage was the signing of the Maastricht Treaty which turned the old European Community into the European Union and by design took down old trade borders that had made European trade so clunky and led to the creation of the Euro currency, which as it stands is the official currency of nineteen of the twenty-eight European Union member states. This crowning achievement could not have been done without the help of French President Francois Mitterrand, but as has been seen through the economic difficulties through the first two decades of the 21st Century, German money has been essential to making the machine run properly. Mr. Kohl may have been forced from office due to illegal campaign donations but that cannot be allowed to erase the impact of arguably Europe’s greatest champion.
