Wolfgang Schäuble, born in 1942, was something of the embodiment of Germany’s political history — first West Germany, then the reunited country. The Christian Democrat had been a member of the Bundestag continuously since 1972 — a record in the roughly 150-year history of German nationwide parliaments. A life without politics was unimaginable for Schäuble.
“I am a parliamentarian out of passion,” he kept saying. When he was asked in an interview how it felt to have shaped politics in the Bundestag for half a century, Schäuble replied with a touch of his typical intellectual irony: “You can see how much fun politics is.”
Wolfgang Schäuble passed away on December 26, 2023.
Wolfgang Schäuble: Watershed moments Two watershed moments shaped Schäuble’s political and private life: The first was an attempted assassination in 1990, which put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
A decade later he had to relinquish the chairmanship of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and with it the prospect of one day becoming German chancellor.
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The son of a CDU local politician from Freiburg studied economics and became a lawyer with a doctorate. In 1984, the newly-elected chancellor Helmut Kohl called him to the center of government in Bonn. He became the head of the Federal Chancellery and with that the organizer of power. Everything went through him.
In 1989, Schäuble became Germany’s interior minister and the events of that year catapulted him into the limelight: After the Berlin Wall fell he played a key role in negotiating the reunification of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).
Only a few weeks later, on October 12, 1990, he was shot by a mentally ill man at an election meeting and sustained life-threatening injuries. He was paralyzed from the third vertebra downwards and had used a wheelchair ever since. But giving up was not an option for him.
He once recalled that he did not bemoan his fate for too long. He said to himself “I cannot change what happened, but as long as I live, I’ll live.” Six weeks after the attack he gave his first press conference in his wheelchair.
CDU party donations scandal In 1998, Schäuble became chairman of the CDU. Chancellor Helmut Kohl stressed repeatedly that he wanted Schäuble to be his successor. It did not turn out that way.
Toward the end of 1999, it became known that during Kohl’s term, illegal donations had been made to the party and that here were secret bank accounts. A few weeks later, Schäuble admitted to having received €100,000 ($110,000 at today’s rate) for the illicit CDU accounts from an arms dealer. He resigned as party chairman. It was a “massive blow,” Schäuble said in an interview with the Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
In the years when the CDU was in opposition (1998-2005), Wolfgang Schäuble concentrated on foreign and security policy.
In the 1990s, then-chancellor Helmut Kohl said he wanted Wolfgang Schäuble to be his successorImage: Franz-Peter Tschauner/dpa/picture alliance In the CDU-led grand coalition government from 2005 he became interior minister and then finance minister. “A tough dog,” was how the opposition described him. For example, he supported an aviation security law that would have made it possible to shoot down an aircraft that had been hijacked by terrorists. The proposal failed.
When he was finance minister (from 2009), the coalition government (of the Christian Democrats, their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union and the neoliberal Free Democrats) enacted the biggest austerity package in the history of modern Germany. During the uncertainty that arose in 2009 about the future of the common euro currency, he became a bogeyman for many Greeks because he prescribed strict austerity measures for the country.
Schäuble’s dream job — president of the parliament In October 2017, Wolfgang Schäuble became president of Germany’s federal parliament, the Bundestag. Symbolically it is the second-highest political position in the country.
In this role, he was respected as one of parliament’s best speakers. With his sharp mind, his deep fundamental understanding of German democracy and his humor, he led Bundestag sessions like no other. The “passionate parliamentarian” seemed to have found his dream job and was reconciled with the intrigues of power that he had repeatedly experienced up close.
He confidently forced even the far-right populist and rebellious Alternative for Germany (AfD) to comply with parliamentary conventions — with sharp objections, reprimands, and fines. Even former Chancellor Angela Merkel was not immune from his rebuke if she exceeded her speaking time. He was the undisputed authority in parliament.
And he remained a relevant figure, even when he returned to the German Bundestag as a “regular lawmaker” after the election in September 2021.
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Influential in his older age Wolfgang Schäuble remained a conservative political visionary well into his senior years. He was always looking for an intellectual challenge. In early 2021, he published a book titled “Borderline experiences — how we grow in crises.” The book is something of a credo for his life as a politician. It shows Schäuble’s curiosity, his delight in arguments and his fun in innovation. During the coronavirus pandemic, Schäuble saw an opportunity to overcome the “immobility” in Germany. “Many people in our country feel that change is needed,” he said.
One of his quotes sums him up well: “We have the freedom to make the world we live in better, to be able to achieve great things.” Wolfgang Schäuble believed in that his whole life.
This article has been translated from German.
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