Wolfgang Schäuble, who helped negotiate German reunification in 1990 and as Angela Merkel's finance minister was a central figure in championing austerity to pull Europe out of its debt crisis more than two decades later, died Tuesday in his home, at the age of 81, according to what his family informed the German news agency Dpa this Wednesday.
Schäuble became Chancellor Angela Merkel's finance minister in October 2009, just before revelations about Greece's ballooning budget deficit triggered the crisis that gripped the continent and threatened to destabilize the global financial order.
A supporter of greater European unity, he helped lead an initiative aimed at deeper integration of all member states and stricter regulation. But Germany came under heavy criticism for its emphasis on austerity and an apparent lack of generosity.
Schäuble, who was once Merkel's boss before their roles were reversed, pulled the strings of Germany's political response to the euro zone crisis, securing support from the right of her conservative bloc for three Greek bailouts.
Schäuble, born in 1942 in Freiburg, in the federal state of Baden-Würrtemberg (south), is considered one of the most prominent politicians of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), of which he became a member in 1965, marking for decades the federal politics and was the most senior member of the Bundestag, the Lower House of the German Parliament, where he obtained his first seat in 1972.
Since the 1980s he held positions in the federal government, such as head of the Chancellery and Minister of Special Affairs, between 1984 and 1989, and head of the Interior, between 1989 and 1991, during the Kohl era, a position in the one that negotiated the German reunification treaty with the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). Between 1991 and 2000, he was parliamentary group leader of the conservative bloc, formed by the CDU and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), in the Bundestag and was also leader of his party between 1998 and 2000.
In 2017, after eight years as finance minister, Schäuble cemented his status as an elder statesman by becoming president of the German parliament, the second-highest position in state after president. It was the last big step in a long frontline political career that saw him overcome enormous setbacks. In 1990 he was the victim of an attack at a CDU election rally in his district that raised fears for his life. Schäuble was left paralyzed and in a wheelchair.
Schäuble retired from all government bodies after the defeat of the conservative bloc in the 2021 general elections and became simply a deputy. In recent times, Schäuble has been withdrawing from the public scene to spend more time with his family - he leaves four children and four grandchildren -, especially after his wife, Ingeborg, suffered a serious fall last summer. cycling.
CDU leader Friedrich Merz expressed his deep sorrow over the death of his party colleague in a social media post on X. "With Wolfgang Schäuble I lose the dearest friend and advisor I have ever had in politics," he said Merz. Tributes also poured in from France, where Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire expressed his "deep sadness" for X. "He was a friend, a loyal and reliable partner, and a tireless craftsman of friendship between Germany and France," he wrote. Le Maire.
