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Person1930 – 2017

Helmut Kohl

Chancellor of West Germany and reunited Germany (1982–1998), who steered the Two Plus Four talks to German unity in 1990

Born in Ludwigshafen, he led Rhineland-Palatinate and then the Christian Democratic Union, and became chancellor in 1982 when a constructive vote of no confidence toppled Helmut Schmidt. In November 1989 he put forward a ten-point plan towards unity, then pressed for East Germany’s first free election and monetary union. Winning Gorbachev’s consent for a united Germany in NATO, he steered the Two Plus Four Treaty and became the “chancellor of unity” in 1990. He also drove European integration through the Maastricht Treaty and the euro. Germany’s longest-serving chancellor after Bismarck at sixteen years, he was tarnished after leaving office by a party-funding scandal.

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3 related events

  1. 1
    1990First Free Election in East Germanyrelated figure

    East Germany elected its People’s Chamber in its first and last free election. The “Alliance for Germany”, promising rapid unification, won with 48 per cent.

  2. 2
    1990German Monetary, Economic and Social Unionkey figure

    The West German mark became East Germany’s legal tender. Wages and pensions were converted one to one, but uncompetitive East German firms collapsed and unemployment soared.

  3. 3
    1990Two Plus Four Treatykey figure

    The two German states and the US, USSR, Britain and France signed the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in Moscow, ending the victors’ rights and giving united Germany full sovereignty.

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  • Mikhail Gorbachev1931 – 2022

    Soviet leader (1985–1991) and first president of the USSR whose perestroika and glasnost ended the Cold War but could not prevent the Soviet collapse; Nobel Peace Prize 1990

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