Confidant of the former chancellor - Kohl's former office manager Juliane Weber is dead
Juliane Weber, the long-time office manager of Helmut Kohl (CDU), died in Bonn on Saturday at the age of 84. The federal CDU in Berlin confirmed a corresponding report in the "Bild" newspaper on Wednesday. Weber was long considered a close confidante of former Chancellor Kohl, who died in 2017.
Weber had been in charge of Kohl's personal office for decades and accompanied him loyally and discreetly through many stages - from the state parliament in Mainz to the then Chancellery in Bonn. After Kohl became an ordinary member of the Bundestag following the 1998 general election, she followed him to Berlin. "There are only two people who know everything about me," Helmut Kohl is reported to have once said. "My wife and Juliane."
Juliane Weber was as power-conscious as her boss
Even in Kohl's day, there was not much concrete information about the native of Lower Saxony. According to a portrait of Weber at the time, her passion for elephants made of glass, stone and precious metal, which adorned her desk, was well known. Nobody who wanted to talk to Kohl could get past her, it was said again and again. Juliane Weber was regarded as the strong woman in the background, loyal to the point of self-abandonment, but as power-conscious as Kohl himself. In a newspaper interview, she once said: "The worst thing in my life would be not to take part."
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Juliane Weber's passing was reported in the "Bild" picture newspaper from her hometown of Berlin. Despite her role as Helmut Kohl's confidante and office manager for several decades, Weber remained a somewhat enigmatic figure even during Kohl's time in office. Kai Diekmann, a renowned German journalist, once highlighted Weber's influence by stating that alongside Kohl's wife, only Juliane knew all of Kohl's secrets.
Source: www.stern.de
