The British public never really warmed to Helmut Kohl. In Britain, he was always seen as too bossy, too bumptious, too… well, too Teutonic. Margaret Thatcher thought so too. ‘My God, that man is SO German,’ she told Charles Powell, after Kohl’s attempt to woo her with his favourite dish, stuffed pig’s stomach, fell horribly flat.
Even the Germans were often ambivalent about their longest serving Chancellor since Bismarck. East Germans ended up disillusioned when Kohl’s lavish promises of ‘blooming landscapes’ failed to materialise. West Germans ended up disillusioned when they had to foot the bill. Yet history will judge him kindly, in Germany and Britain. For all his faults, he was a political colossus, and his death, aged 87, marks the passing of an age.
More sophisticated Germans regarded Kohl as ponderous and provincial.
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