Father of the nation left family in the cold

HE WAS considered a giant of postwar German politics, credited with forging reunification with the Communist east, the rise of the European Union and the creation of the euro.

But, according to a new book by his estranged elder son, everything Chancellor Helmut Kohl undertook was at the expense of his family.

Walter Kohl has shattered the faade of his 80-year-old father's life, painting a portrait of a man who put committees, speeches, party and political duties far ahead - always - of his wife and his family.

In excruciating detail in his book To Live Or Be Lived which is proving gripping reading for Germany's political classes, Walter Kohl writes: "Politics was and remains my father's real home. His true family is called CDU, not Kohl," he said referring to the Christian Democrat Union party his Catholic father led.

"He was the clan chief and everything else took second place. He was certainly never a father like other fathers.

"The party was the most important and enduring source of his energy. He never, with very few exceptions such as my brother's (Peter's] accident in Monza in autumn 1991, gave up a party meeting or official meeting in favour of a family duty. For decades, he invested his best efforts in party and committee work, 'churning out decisions,' as he called it.

"He concentrated his thoughts and wishes on this. It ranked far above family and private life. We moved on his political stage as props, without major roles. We can also say we felt like spectators in his life because we saw him almost every day on television."

Kohl was chancellor from 1982 to 1998 and often tempered his reputation as an "iron" chancellor with an apparently loving family background. He regularly told his son that he did not understand what advantages he had because of his father's standing. "My father often reproached me for not appreciating the advantages I had because of my background. But I didn't want any advantages," Walter said. "I just wanted to be allowed to be like the others of my age.

"It was part of our mother's job always to propagate the hope that at some time it would be different, but in this she let herself be deceived."

His mother, Hannelore, took her own life with an overdose in 2001, aged 68. It was said she had a rare illness that made her unable to bear sunlight and had spent her last 15 months in darkened rooms.

"I too contemplated suicide after she died," said Walter."I thought about an insurance scam whereby I would pretend to be killed in a scuba diving accident so I could get insurance money to live, but I rejected this out of consideration for my own son."

He well remembers the day his mother died because the telephone rang in his home. It was not his father on the other end to tell him that his mother was dead, but his father's secretary. "That about says it all," said Walter.

"Whenever I tried to broach our relationship he would become defensive. For decades I hoped for a 'conversation to clear the air' with my father. Today I know we will never have that conversation. All my attempts failed and ended in a cycle of arguments, misunderstandings and fresh pain."

Walter is 47 and has no contact with his father. The pain of this breach leaches from every page of his book. Walter writes: "Every boy wishes for a father with whom he can explore the world, go camping or play football. Every boy wishes for a father who is there for him. I never managed to reach my father. Now more than 40 years have passed and the essential form of this father-son relationship remains unchanged.

"He thought I saw everything from a negative perspective and was unfair to him. My response was always the same, whether as a timid suggestion or an angry accusation: a father had to be judged as a father and not a chancellor. This was the point at which our discussion usually degenerated into a rhetorical boxing match. In the end we were both frustrated: each felt himself unfairly treated and emotionally exhausted."

Growing up in the terror-wracked Germany of the 1970s - when the left-wing Red Army Faction was active - he said he lived life behind "bullet-proof glass" with armed guards who took him to school and who waited outside the gates.

"My father was merely a visitor in our home," he writes.

Their relationship did not improve with age. When his father married Maike Richter in May 2008, Walter received a telegram from his father stating: "Heidelberg 8 May. We got married. We are very happy. Maike Kohl Richter and Helmut Kohl."

Walter added: "My father has completely distanced himself from me. I once asked him if he wanted this separation and he said yes. He remains my father but he is far, far away from me."

Der Spiegel magazine, Germany's most influential weekly, said the book wounds both Kohl supporters and the great man himself. Its critic wrote: "There are depressing descriptions of a childhood surrounded by high security, shielded from reality during an era when the Red Army Faction, a far-left terrorist group, was threatening top politicians and business leaders.

"Walter Kohl, like so many adolescents, only wanted one thing: to become independent at some point. The fact that he couldn't led to many arguments.It contains remarkable and moving passages that strip away the sentimental image that Kohl once cultivated about his family."

Kohl has not commented; the lack of communication between father and son seems to extend to his son's book, too.