Top court rules memoir recordings belong to Kohl

In Friday's ruling, the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe upheld two lower court decisions, which had already ruled that the audio tapes were the rightful property of the now 85-year-old former West German and German chancellor.

"The appeal is rejected," the court said, referring to a legal challenge of the second court decision, launched by Kohl's ghostwriter, journalist Heribert Schwan.

In the original decision, handed down by Cologne's Regional Court last November, banned Schwan and his publisher from using most of the quotations published in his most recent book on Kohl, "Vermächtnis: Die Kohl Protokole" (Legacy: The Kohl Protocols).

Collaborating with a second author, Tilman Jens, Schwan wrote the book using quotations from more than 600 hours of recordings he had conducted with the former chancellor at his home in Oggersheim in 2001 and 2002 - for the purpose of ghostwriting Kohl's memoirs.

Schwan had already written three volumes of memoirs, but he and Kohl fell out as they were working on a fourth, so "Vermächtnis: Di Kohl Protokole" was published without the former chancellor's authorization - which caused Kohl to file the original legal complaint.

Back in May, Cologne's Higher Regional Court upheld that ruling, after which Schwan decided to take his appeal to Karlsruhe. Friday's ruling is essentially final. Theoretically it could be overturned by the Constitutional Court, but only if a constitutional argument can be made.

Sixteen years at the helm

Helmut Kohl first came to power in 1982 when the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), the junior partners in Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's Social Democrat-led government switched sides, throwing their support behind Kohl and his Christian Democrats (CDU). Kohl and the CDU went on to govern with the support of the FDP until 1998.

Kohl is regarded as a key player in the reunification of Germany in 1990, less than one year after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

pfd/kms (dpa, AFP)