German reunification architect Helmut Kohl dies at 87

Helmut Kohl, Germany's ex-chancellor and architect 
of reunification in 1990, has died at 87.

Kohl led Germany for 16 years (from 1982 to 1998). He 
is credited with bringing East and West Germany together after the fall of the Berlin Wall..

Together with his French ally President Francois 
Mitterrand, he was responsible for the introduction of the euro.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has ordered flags at EU institutions to be flown at half-mast.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said his death filled 
her with deep sadness.

"It will take a while before we can really appreciate what 
we have lost with his passing," she said.

"Helmut Kohl was a great German and a great 
European. Helmut Kohl's efforts brought about the two greatest achievements in German politics of recent 
decades - German reunification and European unity.

"Helmut Kohl understood that the two things were inseparable."

For his part, Mr Juncker said in a tweet: "Helmut's death 
hurts me deeply."

"My mentor, my friend, the very essence of Europe, he
 will be greatly, greatly missed."

Former US President George HW Bush paid tribute to 
the man he knew while in office from 1989 to 1993 as a 
"true friend of freedom" and "one of the greatest leaders in post-war Europe".

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel paid tribute 
to a "great German statesman and above all a great European".


Thatcher's rival

Kohl suffered a bad fall in 2008 and had been using a wheelchair.

He died at his house in Ludwigshafen, in the western 
state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Bild newspaper reports.

Kohl, who led the centre-right Christian Democrats, 
was the longest-serving chancellor of the 20th Century.

A passionate believer in European integration, he 
persuaded Germans to give up their cherished 
deutschmark in favour of the European single currency.

In the UK, he is remembered for his differences over the EU with the late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In France, he is the German leader who held hands with
Mitterrand at a service at the Verdun war memorial in 
1984 to mark the 70th anniversary of World War One.

But for Germans he is above all the man who reunified a country divided by the allied powers after World War 
Two, promising the people of the ex-communist East "flourishing landscapes", in unity with the richer West.


Obituary: Helmut Kohl

Helmut Josef Michael Kohl was born on 3 April 1930 
into a conservative, Catholic family.

His political outlook was shaped by his experiences
 in his hometown of Ludwigshafen in the Rhineland 
during World War Two.

Because of its huge chemical works, the town was 
heavily bombed and, at the age of 12, the young Helmut 
found himself helping to recover the charred bodies of his neighbours from the rubble. What he once described as 
"the blessing of a late birth" freed him from any taints of Nazism.


Denounced by Merkel

Kohl fell from grace when a funding scandal under his leadership of the Christian Democrats came to light after
 he left office in 1998.

Chancellor Merkel was once his protegee, first entering
government under his rule in 1991.

But she publicly denounced Kohl and called for his 
resignation when it was revealed the party had received millions of dollars worth of illegal donations using secret 
bank accounts.

In 2011, in a series of interviews and statements, he 
spoke out against Mrs Merkel's policy of strict austerity to deal with the European debt crisis.

Kohl's later life was also marked by personal tragedy. 
His wife, Hannelore, killed herself in July 2001 after 
suffering from a rare skin condition and depression.