Helmut Kohl -- Cold War hero to scandal and shame

By Mark Heinrich

BERLIN (Reuters): What a difference a decade makes for Helmut Kohl.

Ten years ago, he was a folk hero -- the Pied Piper of German unification who strutted through the Brandenburg Gate, freed east Germans from communist chains and convinced Europe that a bigger Germany could live in peace with its neighbors.

Today, Kohl hardly dares show his face in public, exposed as a political machine boss who amassed millions in slush funds from personal financiers that smoothed the way to four election victories for his Christian Democrats.

For a correspondent who saw the burly Kohl clamber up the Everest of European politics a decade ago, his latter-day slide towards ignominy is little short of stunning.

For the Wende (Change), the word Germans use to denote Kohl's unification express, has taken a legendary place in their historical lexicon beside the Wirtschaftswunder (Economic Miracle) of the post-war 1950s.

Germans have a profound sense of history, as witnessed by the current nightly reruns of national television's newscasts from 10 years ago, a series called Chronik der Wende (Chronicle of the Change). The reruns have nothing to do with Kohl's situation today, but the irony is inescapable.

"An avalanche of dirt has poured over this nation and transformed its apparently solid facade...into a field of rubble where the visible remains of a demolished monument by the name of Kohl reminds us of better times," said an editorial in the weekly magazine Stern.

A man who at times seemed a bumbling provincial politician during his first seven years in power rose wholly unexpectedly to the epic challenge posed by the popular uprising in Communist East Germany that burst the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989.

Many Germans -- Kohl too -- had yearned for that moment since the victorious World War II Allies slashed a border that became the Iron Curtain through the heart of the nation in 1945.

Kohl, however, was caught off guard. He had just begun a groundbreaking state visit to Poland that afternoon. Events could have rapidly eclipsed his ability to react. The chaotic spectacle at the Wall had huge geopolitical implications.

But Kohl seized the torch as he scanned the relentless TV news bulletins from Berlin that evening in Warsaw's Marriott Hotel. He called a news conference at midnight to tell a frantic press pack that he was going to Berlin immediately.

It did not start well for him. Standing on the balcony of West Berlin's city hall to address a crowd of east and west Germans anxious to hear what would happen next, he was roundly booed while the Social Democratic (SPD) mayor was cheered.

But Kohl proved quicker than his SPD rivals to spot the swift evolution of street sentiment in east Germany from a desire for civil rights to a movement for money -- that is, to be able to live like affluent West Germans.

Kohl, sensing a social time bomb, put unification on the agenda. He used homespun diplomacy and West Germany's prodigious financial muscle to override opposition at home and abroad.

By Nov. 28, he unveiled a 10-point plan for unification although, still feeling his way, he set no date for it.

But after striding majestically through the Brandenburg Gate and speaking to adoring crowds all over East Germany chanting, "Helmut, save us!", Kohl realized the pace had to quicken.

He pressed the Communists into accepting free elections. They were ousted in March 1990 by an eastern CDU revived with western CDU cash.

Next came monetary union on July 1 under which Kohl arranged for east Germans to swap their weak "ost" marks at par for blue chip deutschemarks, gilding his hero image in the east.

He and foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher assured London, Paris and Moscow that a bigger Germany would be like West Germany -- a modest liberal democracy, member of NATO and the European Community, not an aggressive Fourth Reich.

In July, Kohl secured the crucial assent of Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev in talks at a spa in the Caucasus foothills near where the Kremlin leader grew up.

In a decisive gesture, Kohl granted Moscow $9.6 billion to pay for a Soviet military withdrawal from East Germany and fund Gorbachev's reform drive, with the prospect of more to come.

In October, the Germanys merged in a blaze of fireworks.

East Germans celebrated, propelling Kohl's romp to victory in united Germany's first general elections two months later.

West Germans were not so enamored of unity so soon, fearing there would soon be a big bill to pay. They were right.

Kohl's star had risen as far as it would. It began to fall as the costs of rapid unification began to soar.

His government raised taxes and shelled out hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies through the 1990s to integrate an eastern economy ossified by communism into the dynamic west.

Voters grew disenchanted with Kohl as he began spending more time lobbying for European monetary union and enlargement than tending to a German economy sagging under the burden of unity.

Whispers in the party that the CDU might stand a better chance with a new face up front never threatened the patriarch's grip.

But popular discontent ended Kohl's long reign in the 1998 elections all the same. A year later, his star waxed again as his successor, Gerhard Schroeder, stumbled and Kohl was feted at 10th anniversary celebrations by the Brandenburg Gate.

But within weeks, he and his CDU were revealed to have stockpiled undeclared cash donations to prolong their power.

Kohl obtained US$1 million in secret gifts of cash to entrench the CDU's dominance in east Germany even though surviving reform communists were nowhere near regaining power. A local western branch of the party found $10 million more it could not explain.

"Kohl's money maneuvers were rooted in an old friend-foe mentality based on the logic of the Cold War. Even if there was no pure corruption, there was a pure anti-communism that eroded any awareness of illegality when it came to secret accounts," commented the liberal weekly Die Zeit.

Although Kohl gracefully conceded electoral defeat in 1998, he has struggled to come to terms with his loss of his pre-eminence.

Whenever he has given speeches at public functions, he has started by declaring: "I was chancellor 16 years and chairman of the CDU for 25 years" and then listing his weighty achievements, offsetting those against his "mistakes".

He did the same before loyal CDU acolytes in Bremen two weeks ago right after quitting under fire as honorary party chairman, ignoring his fall from grace in the eyes of many.

"Behind the upright middle-class CDU facade lay a swamp of dubious mafia practices -- a jungle of secret accounts, illegal transactions, doctored books, criminally deceptive maneuvers, and in the center, the statesman as godfather," said Stern.

"The CDU is politically bankrupt. It will spend two or three legislative periods in opposition. Maybe over that time a new morality will grow out of Kohl's legacy."