Germany: German ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt dies at 96

Mr Schmidt, who was a Social Democrat, was an architect of the European Monetary System, which linked EU currencies and was a key step on the path to the euro.

He was credited with helping to consolidate the country's post-war economic boom.
He is seen as one of the most popular German leaders since WWII.

Mr Schmidt died on Tuesday afternoon in his home city of Hamburg, his doctor Heiner Greten was quoted as saying by German media.

The doctor provided no further details.

Read more: German ex-Chancellor Helmut Schmidt dies at 96 - BBC News

EU: Germany In, With And For Europe - by Helmut Schmidt

The following is the transcript of a speech former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt held at the party congress of the SPD in Berlin on 4th December 2011. Look back at the European developments of the last 4 years and you will see how up to date this speech is.

Let me begin on a personal note. When Sigmar Gabriel, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and my party asked me once again for a contribution, I recalled with pleasure that, 65 years ago today, I was kneeling on the floor with my wife, Loki, painting invitation posters for the SPD in the Neugraben district of Hamburg. But I must admit that at my age I am beyond good and evil in respect of any party politics. For a long time now my two major interests have been the tasks facing this country and the role it should play in the crucial arena of European integration.

I am pleased to share this lectern with Jens Stoltenberg from Norway who, in the midst of the profound misfortune his country has suffered, has provided us and all Europeans with a shining example of unwavering, constitutional, liberal and democratic leadership.

When you’re as old as I am, you have a natural tendency to take a long-term perspective – both backwards into history and forwards into the future, in which you place your hopes and your aspirations. That said, I nonetheless found it impossible to give a straightforward answer to a very simple question put to me just a few days ago by Wolfgang Thierse, who asked me when I thought Germany would finally become a normal country. I answered by saying that Germany would not be a “normal” country in the foreseeable future.

Standing in the path to normality is the enormous and unique burden of our history. A further stumbling block is the economically and demographically dominant central position Germany occupies in the middle of our very small continent with its multitude of different nation

For the complete transcript of the speech Germany In, With And For Europe click here

Germany;Former Chancellor of Germany Helmut Schmidt Retains Wit and Smoking Habit at 95 - by Alison Smale

When he was born, World War I had just ended. He was German chancellor for eight years, roughly as long as he served in Hitler’s Wehrmacht. And now, in a country where old men are much revered, Helmut Schmidt is turning 95, and his nation is reflecting on a politician once renowned if feared for his sharp tongue but now elevated to the status of icon.

Not that the gruffness or laserlike judgment have disappeared. Mr. Schmidt may not have been chancellor for over 30 years — he was forced from power in fall 1982 when some in his Social Democratic Party and others withdrew support — but he still commands attention, is still co-publisher of the respected weekly Die Zeit and just was named Germany’s most significant chancellor in a poll by Stern magazine. 

In the two weeks before his 95th birthday on Monday, he was in Moscow seeing old Soviet friends and was invited to a chat at the Kremlin with President Vladimir V. Putin. He used his pulpit at Die Zeit to pen an appeal for curbing German exports of small arms. An hourlong conversation in his sixth-floor office proved as bracing as the sea winds that buffet his hometown, this ancient Hanseatic port of Hamburg. 

In his supposed dotage in this country of rules, Mr. Schmidt enjoys a rare impunity. A heavy smoker, he does as no other mortal may: puff away anywhere, on television, at meetings, even, according to German journalists who have witnessed it, in Washington. When the European Union threatened earlier this year to ban menthol cigarettes, Mr. Schmidt’s friend Peer Steinbrück reported that the old chancellor had stockpiled 200 cartons of his favored Reynos — enough to feed his two-to three-pack-a-day habit for two or three years.

Aside from a low wheeze that growls at times through his throat, Mr. Schmidt seems to have thrived on his nicotine intake (augmented, always, by snuff). A greater impediment, he explains with something of a glint in his gray-blue eyes, is deafness: he wears a hearing aid and conversation must be seated at his desk so his brain and eyes can knit together the audiovisual strands, he says.

Read more: Former Chancellor of Germany Retains Wit and Smoking Habit at 95 - NYTimes.com