Biography of a Kohl confidant: Exchange of letters reveals how former Chancellor Kohl’s family broke up
It is a letter full of icy cold. But also marked by deep disappointment and resignation. The two-page letter that BUNTE magazine has at its disposal documents how the feud in Helmut Kohl’s family escalated – and how the final breakup between the father and his sons actually came about. By Martin Heidemanns
The one with one
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The former chancellor sends his son Peter, 58, the letter on August 10, 2011 by fax. At 7:57 a.m. that day, he received an email from Peter in which the son complained that on July 5 – the tenth anniversary of the death of mother Hannelore – he had been refused entry to his parents’ house. He also accuses the father of not having visited his first wife’s grave that day. In the email he immediately announces his visit for the next day.
The father’s answer is unequivocal. He shares: “I don’t want to see you tomorrow. I would also like to ask you not to perform such an unworthy scene as on the anniversary of your mother’s death, either tomorrow or on any other day, at my front door. I was ashamed of my sons.” At that time, the relationship between the father and his sons had long been strained. “They only ever care about the money,” the former chancellor allegedly complained to friends.
In his letter to his son Peter, the unitary chancellor continues: “How do you imagine that I’m sitting here with my wife and have to listen to your attacks non-stop and at the same time I’m supposed to meet you – what’s the point of all this? (…) If you now think you have to accuse me, above all make everything public and sell my private life – and then also implicate Maike, whom I love, then I can only shake my head. (…) As long as you keep talking about me and my wife, who I love, there will be no contact. You and your brother should think about that.”
Money greed of the Kohl sons
Until the death of the former chancellor on June 16, 2017, the relationship with his sons remained shattered. Until then, little was publicly known about the reasons for the rift. The journalist Kai Diekmann, 58, now gives new insights into the family life of the Kohls in his biography. The former editor-in-chief of “Bild” was considered one of Helmut Kohl’s closest confidants for more than 20 years. Diekmann believes, he writes, that it was the Kohl sons’ greed for money that destroyed their relationship with their father. Walter and Peter Kohl saw a kind of “money printing machine” in their father.
Walter Kohl, 59, defends himself against the allegations, examines legal steps and explains: “Many descriptions of Kai Diekmann are wrong.” The fact is, however, that there have always been arguments about the finances. On September 2, 2015, son Peter asserted a claim for a compulsory portion from his mother’s inheritance against Helmut Kohl through his lawyer and stated that an inheritance contract had been withheld from him. He is suing the Frankenthal district court.
“Only the cold hand passes”
Helmut Kohl’s lawyer wrote in the statement of defense that his son Peter had already received securities worth 400,000 Deutschmarks from his mother on November 5, 2000, six months before her death. This donation must be offset against the compulsory portion. Donations also went to son Walter. In addition, Helmut Kohl also gave his sons securities. The former chancellor is said to have been against these donations at the time. “Only hands over the cold hand,” he says, according to the memorandum of his tax advisor. Wife Hannelore is said to have replied: “Then I’ll do it alone.” Walter Kohl explained to the magazine “Spiegel”: “The gifts that we received before my mother’s suicide arose from her concern that she would lose everything in the course of the party donation affair can.”
Between March 2002 and March 2004 Kohl is said to have given his son Walter another 200,000 Deutschmarks. In total – as Kohl-Freund Diekmann calculates in his biography – 1.15 million Deutschmarks flowed to the sons in this way. Supposedly a third of the assets of the Kohl couple. Walter Kohl’s lawyer describes the classification of gifts and the inheritance contract in Diekmann’s book as “inaccurate”, but does not give any details. The legal dispute over the book should not be anticipated.
It was never meant to be discussed
In February 2008, Helmut Kohl fell in his house and was hospitalized with life-threatening injuries. Kohl’s second wife Maike, 59, is now getting involved in the arguments about money. She asks the sons – allegedly also on behalf of the father – to settle their insurance payments themselves in the future. For Walter and Peter this is an affront. “You really can’t wait to get rid of us,” Walter wrote back. Even when Helmut Kohl is in the hospital with a craniocerebral trauma, there is no rapprochement or reconciliation. Kai Diekmann writes in his biography: “Obviously the brothers are not at all concerned with their father, with the question of whether he will survive and if so, how, but exclusively with their own material well-being.”
“That is a cynical and untrue assumption,” Walter Kohl told Der Spiegel. “My brother and I, together with our families, often visited our father in the hospital. My father’s isolation from his new partner Maike already began there.”
At the beginning of January 2009 – according to Diekmann in his book – his son Walter is said to have made severe accusations against his father in a long letter: In harsh words he demands a clarifying discussion and accuses his father of having started the relationship with Maike before his mother committed suicide .
This conversation was never meant to happen.
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I was BILD: A life between headlines, state affairs and scandals
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