HELMUT KOHL (born 1930 in Ludwigshafen)

• 1946: Joins CDU at age 16• 1958: Earns Ph.D. in political science and modern history• 1960s: Lobbyist for chemical industry• 1969-76: Becomes Germany’s youngest state premier in Rhineland-Palatinate• 1976: Loses his first national election campaign• 1980: Defers to Franz Josef Strauss as chancellor candidate• 1982-1998: Chancellor in coalition with the FDP

“We’ve had abortions!”

Stern, 6 June 1971

(even Romy Schneider)

THE LEGAL BATTLE OVER ABORTION

1974: Social-liberal Bundestag majority legalizes abortion in the first 3 months, but Supreme Court intervenes.February 1975: The Constitutional Court rules that abortion on demand violated the constitutional guarantee of the “dignity of the person.”1975: Compromise law permits abortion-- If there was a serious threat to the health or life of the

pregnant woman; If it could be presumed that a resulting child’s health

would be gravely harmed; If the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest; If the pregnant woman was in a state of intolerable

distress (on socioeconomic or mental health grounds).

“The Supreme Court rejected legalized abortion by citing

Article 1, Paragraph 1 of the Basic Law: The dignity of the

person is inviolable”(West Berlin, 1975)

Voter Participation by German Men (gray) andWomen (green) converged in 1972, and the SPD defeated the CDU among women under age 40

Helmut Kohl & the CDU appeal to the “New Woman” in 1976

The “Party Friends” Kohl and Franz Josef Strauss in 1976:

With the Bavarian Strauss as their chancellor candidate in

1980, the CDU/CSU vote dipped from 48.8% to 44.3%.

Helmut Schmidt’s

biggest problem was the

unemployment caused by the “oil shocks” of 1973 and 1979

BY 1982 THE LEADERS OF THE FDP ASSERTED THEMSELVES

“The headlines follow: The area of agreement between Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Foreign Minister Hans

Dietrich Genscher is becoming ever smaller.”

Economics Minister Otto Graf Lambsdorff is likened to Martin

Luther for his attacks on Schmidt’s Keynesianism

The Kohl-Genscher Cabinet, 1983

“With us, for Europe” (CDU, 1984)

President Francois Mitterand and Helmut Kohl jointly honor the dead of Verdun, September 22,

1984

NEW FUNCTIONS FOR THE

EUROPEAN UNION

1952: European Coal & Steel Community1958: Common Market (EEC)1962: Common Agricultural Policy1979: European parliament elected1992: All non-tariff barriers removed1999: Monetary union

WEST GERMAN EXPORTS (millions of marks)

YEAR EXPORTSEXPORT

SURPLUS

1978 284,907 41,200

1980 350,328 8,947

1982 427,741 51,277

1984 488,223 53.966

1986 526,363 112,619

1988 567,654 128,045

Italian Guest Workers arrive in Wolfsburg, 1962:The FRG signed labor recruitment agreements with Italy

in 1955, Greece 1960, Turkey 1961, Portugal 1964, & Yugoslavia in 1968

“Foreign Worker – Guest Worker – Colleague?”Conference organized by the government &

employers, 1966

FOREIGNERS LIVING IN WEST GERMANY (thousands)

Year Total Turk. Yug. ItalyGreec

eSpain Aust. Holl. Pol.

1951

486 1 23 22 3 1 47 75 103

1961

686 7 16 197 42 44 57 65 ??

1971

3439

653 594 590 395 270 163 109 50

1981

4630

1546

637 625 299 177 176 109 83

1991

5882

1780

775 560 337 135 187 ?? 271

2001

7319

1948

628 616 363 129 189 112 310

Turkish shops in Berlin-

Kreuzberg, 1983

Hostel for Turkish Guest Workers and

special school for Turkish children, Frankfurt,

1969

Fundamentalist Moslem School in Gelsenkirchen, 1982:

Many Turks came to Germany to flee secularism

Friedlund Refugee Camp (1976), the largest camp for the 1.4 million ethnic Germans who arrived from the

East, 1950-87; they automatically gained West German citizenship.

Asylum Seekers in West Berlin wait for their checks (1982):

Article 16 of the Basic Law states, “Persons persecuted on political grounds enjoy the right of

asylum.” In 1980 a record 107,818 persons applied for asylum.

THE FAR RIGHT IN WEST GERMANY

The National Democratic Party (NPD): founded by 4 ex-Nazis in 1964 to demand the borders of 1937, a ban on immigration, and removal of all leftists from government. It won representation in 7 state legislatures in 1966-68, but only 4.3% of the national vote in 1969.The Deutsche Volks-Union, founded in 1971 by the millionaire Gerhard Frey (merged with the NPD in 2011).The Republikaner, founded by Franz Schönhuber in 1983. It won 7-11% of the vote in 1989/90 in state elections in Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Hesse, and West Berlin, and cleared the 5% hurdle for the European parliament.Neo-Nazi youth groups, with an average membership of perhaps 1,400 in the 1980s. They beat up thousands of people with dark skin and committed at least 25 murders.

“Security through Law and Order”

(September 1969):10% of this party’s 30,000 members

and 15% of its staff had formerly belonged to the

NSDAP.It called for a

“People’s Democracy”

resembling the Weimar

constitution.

Franz Schönhuber(1923-2005):

Son of a butcher, Waffen-SS volunteer, Munich TV journalist,

leader of the Republikaner, 1983-

1994

“A solemn moment at the ground-breaking for the House of German Art.

The Papal Nuncio Vasallo di Torregrossa has just

said to the Führer:‘For a long time I did not understand you. I have tried to for a

long time. Today I do understand

you.’Today every German Catholic understands

Adolf Hitler as well and will therefore vote ‘YES!’

on November 12”(referendum campaign

poster, fall 1933)

The Republikaner won 7.3% of the

European Parliament vote in

June 1989:“Yes to Europe.

No to this European

Community.German Interests

Come First!”

“The Boat is Full!End the Asylum

Swindle!”REPUBLIKANERplacard, 1991.

The Republikaner denounced

Helmut Kohl and Ronald Reagan at the Bitburg Military Cemetery, May 5, 1985: The 2,000 soldiers’

graves included about 50 from the Waffen-SS

Pandering to the Far Right?

“Germans should get off their knees and learn to walk tall again. That means saying yes to the idea that we have been born German, and not letting the vision of a great German past be blocked by the screens of those accursed twelve years between 1933 and 1945.... German history cannot be presented as an endless chain of mistakes and crimes.” {Franz Josef Strauss, leader of Bavaria’s CSU, speaking in 1987 after his party suffered losses to the Republikaner.}“Those young men [German soldiers buried at Bitburg] are victims of Nazism also.... They were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps. Germans have a guilt feeling that’s been imposed on them, and I just think it’s unnecessary. I feel strongly that instead of re-awakening the memories, we should observe this day as the day when, forty years ago, peace began.” {President Ronald Reagan, responding to critics of his decision visit Bitburg in 1985}

Revulsion against the far right spread in May 1993 after extremist

youths hurled firebombs into this

house in Solingen, and five Turkish women and children died in

the fire

“German Asylum Seekers” (1993; including Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Rudolf Hilferding, etc.)

“Together, against hatred of foreigners”

(1991)

IN 1993 THE CDU AND SPD AGREED ON THE FOLLOWING CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT:

Article 16a: “The right of asylum cannot be claimed by anyone who enters [Germany] from a country of the European Community or from another country where the application of the Convention on the Legal Status of Refugees and the Convention to Protect Human Rights and Civil Liberties is ensured.”Active cooperation with all countries on Germany’s borders greatly reduced the flow of applicants for asylum and the backlog of asylum cases.The vote for the Republikaner sank almost immediately, and bitter feuds broke out among its leaders…