On the death of Wolfgang Schäuble: Meeting this man was always an experience

Obituary - On the death of Wolfgang Schäuble: Meeting this man was always an experience

Wolfgang Schäuble was a special personality. Journalists who came to him never knew exactly what to expect. Sometimes the passionate music lover would greet you in one of his offices in a cheerful mood, whistling an opera melody. Sometimes he was aloof and cool.

Schäuble came across as a person of respect with all his political experience and personal fate. As a visitor, you quickly felt self-conscious, sometimes even inferior. Sometimes he helped you out of this situation with kindness, sometimes he let the guest stew in the feeling of his own unworthiness. Sometimes you would leave his office impressed by so much acumen, sometimes you would ponder what he was actually trying to say while listening to an interview recording.

But it was always an experience to meet this man.

Schäuble was a unique figure in German politics. Probably no one else has shaped the country like him without ever having been chancellor. Few have left behind such influential speeches as he did without ever having been Federal President. That is what made his political career so great - and tragic.

It is also fitting that Schäuble had just achieved perhaps the greatest success of his political life in 1990 with the German-German Unification Treaty when, just a few days after reunification, on October 12, 1990, an assassin gunned him down during an election campaign event. Since then, Schäuble has lived in a wheelchair, battled against the adversities of his disability, was passionate about sport and remained politically mobile, but at the same time struggled with his existence. He told stern magazine in 1997: "A cripple as chancellor? You have to ask that question."

A gigantic life as a politician

Schäuble was a lawyer by training. In 1972, he ran for a direct mandate in the Bundestag for the first time, allegedly in the firm belief that it wouldn't work anyway. He went on to win the Offenburg constituency 14 times in a row. Apart from Konrad Adenauer, Schäuble has sat in parliament with all the German chancellors, sometimes opposite them in the opposition or as leader of the government parliamentary group, sometimes next to them as a minister, sometimes slightly higher up, as President of the Bundestag.

He was a man of the executive, but "also a passionate parliamentarian", said the current President of the Bundestag, Bärbel Bas, on his 50th parliamentary anniversary and called Schäuble a great "champion of democratic debate with respect for his political counterpart".

As a newcomer to the Bundestag, Schäuble immediately made a name for himself in a committee of inquiry that investigated - initially inconclusively - the allegations of vote-buying surrounding the failed constructive vote of no confidence against Willy Brandt. Schäuble gave a much-noticed speech on this in 1974, in which he spoke about the credibility of parliament. The impression should not be created that "one crow does not peck out another's eye".

Schäuble was a parliamentarian through and through. At many milestones in his career, he repeatedly drew attention to the Bundestag: for better, as with his speech in favor of moving the government and parliament to Berlin in 1991, of which he himself was always particularly proud; for worse, eight years later with his false statement in the CDU party donation scandal, which cost him the party and parliamentary group chairmanship and possibly also the chancellorship.

His relationship with Angela Merkel remained ambivalent to the end

When he sat in the Bundestag for 50 years, Bärbel Bas also quoted Angela Merkel, who once said: "Wolfgang Schäuble is a stroke of luck for German and European politics." The former Chancellor meant it. And yet this praise did not in the least describe the complex and complicated relationship between Schäuble and Merkel.

Schäuble always credited himself with having discovered Merkel early on. The two first met during the negotiations on the Unification Treaty: Schäuble as West German Interior Minister, Merkel as deputy GDR government spokesperson. He supported her during her time as Federal Minister and made her General Secretary of the CDU after the end of the Kohl government.

Merkel bypassed Schäuble to launch the famous article in the "FAZ" newspaper in which she called on her party to overcome the era of the former chancellor, who had been damaged by the party donations scandal. When he asked her why she had not informed him in advance as party leader, she replied: "You wouldn't have allowed me to."

Schäuble was unable to become Chancellor, and FDP leader Guido Westerwelle prevented him from becoming Federal President. When Merkel became chancellor in 2005, she was clever enough to include Schäuble in the cabinet, first as interior minister and later as finance minister. He was always loyal, which by no means meant blind allegiance. The two clashed most violently during the euro crisis and in their dealings with Greece, a dispute in which Merkel coined his most famous catchphrase as a threat to Athens: "isch over."

Despite their differences, Merkel stuck by her finance minister, even when he had to spend weeks in hospital and stand in for him in Brussels. Merkel told Schäuble via his wife Ingeborg that he should take all the time he needed to recover. He did not forget that.

Nevertheless, the relationship remained difficult. In 2017, Merkel did not bring him back into the cabinet, instead he became President of the Bundestag - allegedly reluctantly. And yet he turned this office into another highlight of his career because he defended the dignity of the House with his personal authority, even against the often unworthy AfD.

He intervened decisively in the CDU twice more

It wasn't so long ago that Schäuble described Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Willy Brandt as great chancellors, but when asked whether Angela Merkel was one of them. It came across as a tit-for-tat response to a little nastiness from the woman he worked with for over 30 years: After the CDU/CSU ceased to be the strongest parliamentary group in 2021 and Schäuble no longer became President of the Bundestag, Merkel had said that she had learned a lot from Schäuble, "including the saying: respice finem - consider the end".

These were jibes like footnotes in a political relationship that could never be fully understood by outsiders, oscillating between respect and distance, between loyalty and aversion, political toughness and personal concessions.

Schäuble has intervened decisively in the CDU twice in recent years: in 2018, after months of bitter dispute, he helped to settle the dispute over refugee policy between the CDU and CSU. And in 2021, he put forward Armin Laschet as the candidate for chancellor against Markus Söder. The CSU has not forgotten that.

Schäuble's actual favorite, his long-time friend Friedrich Merz, will probably only get his chance now. Wolfgang Schäuble will not live to see it.

Schäuble did not want to run for the next Bundestag. One sometimes wondered what this passionate politician would do without politics. Now fate has forestalled the answer. Schäuble died on Wednesday night at the age of 81.