Former President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schäuble - CDU politician dies at the age of 81
Former Bundestag President Wolfgang Schäuble (1942-2023) is dead. This was reported by "Tagesschau", among others, citing his family. According to the report, the CDU politician fell asleep peacefully at home surrounded by his family on Tuesday evening. Born in Freiburg (Breisgau), he was 81 years old.
Sensational career in politics
The grand seigneur of the Christian Democrats was the longest-serving member of parliament to celebrate two anniversaries last year: On September 18, he turned 80 years old and on December 13, he had been a member of the German Bundestag for 50 years.
The lawyer with a doctorate in law, who unmistakably came from Breisgau in southern Baden, was initially a government councillor at the Freiburg tax office. This was followed by a sensational career in politics: he was Federal Minister for Special Tasks and Head of the Federal Chancellery under Chancellor Helmut Kohl (1930-2017), Interior Minister (in the Kohl and Merkel cabinets), Finance Minister under Chancellor Angela Merkel (69). Wolfgang Schäuble led the CDU as parliamentary group leader and federal chairman and was President of the Bundestag.
He will go down in the history books as one of the architects of German reunification, where he was instrumental in negotiating the Unification Treaty with the former GDR in 1990. On his initiative, Berlin became the new capital of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In a wheelchair after assassination attempt
Despite these great achievements, he was denied the two highest political offices: Wolfgang Schäuble was never Federal Chancellor and never Federal President - which also has to do with the event of October 12, 1990. A mentally ill assassin shot him at an election campaign event in Oppenau, Baden. A bullet hit him through the chest and into the spinal cord, leaving the then 48-year-old Wolfgang Schäuble paralyzed from the third thoracic vertebra and confined to a wheelchair.
Without his family, the life of the politician Schäuble would probably have been different. In an interview with the actor and playwright Peter Radtke (80), who is also disabled, and the Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Schäuble said in October 2019 that "half" of his wife Ingeborg (80) was also in a wheelchair because she had "shared this new life with me". "I don't know if I would have behaved the same way the other way around. I hope so. The children didn't have too many problems with the new situation. Our dog had the most problems. We had a dog back then that never got used to the wheelchair, he just stopped coming to me. That was terrible."
He was a senior member of parliament. "Of course I go to the parliamentary group meetings, but I try to only give my advice when I'm asked for it. And not just like that. I can't stand old people who constantly interfere," he told the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. His mandate would have lasted until 2025, a year ago Schäuble had announced in an interview with the "Tagesspiegel": Then "it's over".
Wolfgang Schäuble is survived by Ingeborg Schäuble, to whom he had been married since 1969, as well as their four children and four grandchildren.
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Source: www.stern.de
