Wolfgang Schäuble, a driving force behind Germany's unification and instrumental in European austerity, has died aged 81.
The German statesman passed away "peacefully" in his sleep on Tuesday night. First elected in 1972, Schäuble served in the Bundestag for over 50 years, holding five different ministry positions under chancellors Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel.
A member of Germany's centre-right Christian Democrats(CDU), Schäuble succeeded Kohl as party leader in 1982. However, any hopes of becoming chancellor were dashed when the party was embroiled in an illegal payments scandal. When Merkel took office in 2005, Schäuble acted as her right-hand man, first as interior minister and later as finance minister.
Born in Freiburg im Breisgau on the French border, Schäuble was a tireless advocate for Franco-German reconciliation and European unity. His expertise in politics and economic policy in East Germany propelled him into a decisive role in German unification in 1990.
Schäuble's legacy is equally defined by his staunch advocacy of austerity throughout the eurozone debt crisis. He disagreed with the bailouts, famously suggesting that Greece take a "timeout for a few years" from the eurozone instead.
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Following an assassination attempt in 1990 when he was shot three times in the chest, Schäuble has been paralysed from the waist down. He continued his career in politics as a wheelchair user for over 30 years, and retired after presidency of the Bundestag between 2017 and 2021.
Reacting to the statesman's death, Merkel said Germany had lost "an outstanding personality". In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), German Chancellor Olaf Scholz described him as a shaping influence over the country’s politics for over half a century, praising him as a "precise thinker, passionate politician, and a tenacious democrat".
"Wolfgang Schäuble was the embodiment of the political project of buttressing a monetary union in which he himself did not believe," former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis wrote. "History will judge him harshly, but no more harshly than those who succumbed to his disastrous project and policies."
