Germany Mourns Hannelore Kohl, Tributes Flow
Neighbors in Oggersheim, the leafy suburb of Ludwigshafen that was Kohl's Rhineland political fiefdom, handed in flowers to police keeping onlookers away from the modern bungalow, where Kohl had stayed overnight after rushing home from Berlin.
The 71-year-old ex-chancellor, now a backbench conservative member of Parliament struggling to clear his name over a party funding scandal, appeared briefly, head down, in shirtsleeves and braces, to take some air in the garden.
A funeral was planned for next Wednesday at nearby Speyer. Details of the ceremony, including how the Roman Catholic Church would treat the suicide, were not available.
German media said that Kohl, who rushed home after being told in the Reichstag that his chauffeur's wife had found Hannelore's body, had spent time with a Catholic priest.
"Germany Mourns Hannelore Kohl," was the headline in more than one newspaper. Not just from Germany, but from Moscow, Paris, Washington and elsewhere, came condolences from the leaders who, with Kohl, helped bring the Cold War to an end.
"Suicide!" screamed the top-selling **** Bild****, which said the dead woman had taken a drug overdose. A coroner ruled no autopsy was needed but had not revealed the cause of death.
Between front-page pictures of Kohl and of the elegant blonde who was a retiring but regular presence by his side for 41 years, **** Bild **** reproduced in full Thursday's one-page statement from Kohl's office revealing the cause of her death.
----- Gorbachev Mourns -----
Crippled with pain from a rare allergy to light that had kept her all but a prisoner in recent years at home in Ludwigshafen, the 68-year-old former interpreter had chosen "freely to withdraw from life" on account of the "hopelessness of her state of health".
She left farewell letters for Kohl and their two sons, Walter and Peter, who had also rushed home to Ludwigshafen. "Germany Mourns, Germany Weeps," wrote **** Bild****. "The news of the suicide of Hannelore Kohl makes the political dispute in the capital seem so irrelevant. The soul of the nation is touched."
"The sense of loss is felt by all who had the good fortune to know this wonderful woman," wrote Mikhail Gorbachev in a personal note to Kohl quoted in German newspapers.
Kohl formed a key partnership with the former Soviet president as the Cold War ended, the Berlin Wall came down and Moscow was persuaded to pull its troops out of East Germany to allow the country to reunite. It was Kohl's finest hour.
Though never a first lady to relish the limelight in the way of Gorbachev's wife Raisa, who died in Germany two years ago, Hannelore Kohl nonetheless won widespread affection at home for her elegant but down-to-earth presence at the side of the man who became modern Germany's longest serving chancellor.
---- Woman in the Shadow ----
Her contribution to Kohl's career, as helpmeet and adviser, reality check and loyalist -- she famously said "I stand by my man" when scandal allegations emerged two years ago -- had been underestimated, many said, by those who called her the "Barbie of the Rhineland" on account of her bouffant, blonde coiffure.
Many newspapers chose to link her career in the shadow of her physical and political colossus of a husband with the illness, triggered in 1993 by a reaction to penicillin, which left her increasingly unable to stand being in the light.
"Die Frau im Schatten" -- The Woman in the Shadow -- was the operatic headline in Berlin's radical left daily, the **** Tageszeitung****. Bitterly critical of Kohl, its commentators found kinder words for the woman by his side.
"Hannelore Kohl, once an emancipated, challenging personality, was increasingly damned to passivity through her role as the chancellor's wife," it said.
"She was the perfect woman by the side of the ex-chancellor," wrote the liberal ****** Sueddeutsche Zeitung ***** newspaper. "Many underestimated her."