Germany: Ex-Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble dies at 81

The former speaker of the Bundestag parliament and finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has died surrounded by his family, who first informed the German DPA news agency of his passing early on Wednesday. 

Schäuble died peacefully at around 8 p.m. on Tuesday night, his family said.

CDU mainstay for decades, with difficult legacy in southern Europe

A veteran leading member of the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), Schäuble was born in Freiburg, the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg, in 1942.

He entered parliament in 1972 and directly reclaimed his Offenburg constituency in every subsequent election, making him the longest-serving parliamentarian in Germany's postwar history.

He was probably at his most prominent internationally during the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent eurozone sovereign debt difficulties, when he was Germany’s fiscally hawkish finance minister calling on southern European countries to limit their borrowing.

He became a renowned, and often reviled, figure in countries like Greece during this period.

This is reflected in comments made by Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's finance minister in the first half of 2015, who negotiated on the part of Athens during the Greek debt crisis from 2009 to 2018.

"Wolfgang Schäuble was the embodiment of the political project of buttressing a monetary union in which he himself did not believe," Varoufakis wrote after the news of Schäuble's death. "History will judge him harshly, but no more harshly than those who succumbed to his disastrous project and policies."

But at one point, Schäuble also appeared to be next in line to follow Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Germany's top political job.

He had served in a series of government positions including as interior minister. That was the role he held in 1990, when an assassination attempt and gunshot wounds confined him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. 

He is survived by his wife Ingeborg and four children. You can read our full obituary here. 

Condolences and tributes

Current CDU leader Friedrich Merz was among the first politicians to respond to the news on Wednesday. He said Schäuble's death "fills me with great sadness."

"In Wolfgang Schäuble, I lose my closest friend and confidant that I ever had in politics," Merz said on social media, signing with his initials to indicate he had authored the post. "My thoughts are with his family, in particular his wife Ingeborg."

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat who succeeded Schäuble as finance minister in 2018, said he had "shaped our country for more than half a century," as a parliamentarian, minister and as speaker of parliament.  

"In him Germany is losing a bright thinker, passionate politician and strident democrat," Scholz said. 

Veteran Green politician Katrin Göring-Eckhardt posted a lengthy tribute, saying the country was losing a "passionate defender of our parliamentary democracy," who she said she grew to respect greatly despite "differing political convictions." 

"I valued his strengths in debate, his persistence, not always insisting but always being open to remaining in discussions, on a high and challenging level," Göring-Eckhardt said, praising his decades of political service.

The Central Council of Jews in Germany also posted a tribute, calling the 81-year-old "a close friend of the Jewish community in Germany." 

msh/rc (dpa, epd, AFP)

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