GERMANY: TRIBUTES POUR IN AFTER SUICIDE OF HANNELORE KOHL WIFE OF FORMER CHANCELLOR HELMUT KOHL

Record ID: 648241

  • Title: GERMANY: TRIBUTES POUR IN AFTER SUICIDE OF HANNELORE KOHL WIFE OF FORMER CHANCELLOR HELMUT KOHL
  • Date: 7th July 2001
  • Summary: (U5)OGGERSHEIM, GERMANY (JULY 6, 2001) (REUTERS) 1. SLV EXTERIORS HOUSE OF FORMER GERMAN CHANCELLOR HELMUT KOHL AND HIS WIFE (AND WHERE SHE WAS FOUND DEAD THURSDAY) 0.07 2. MV POLICE; SCU FLOWER ARRANGEMENT; MV POLICEMAN BRINGS FLOWER ARRANGEMENT TO DOOR (3 SHOTS) 0.25 3. MV/SCU PHOTOGRAPHERS (2 SHOTS) 0.31 4. MV HELMUT KOHL GOES INTO HIS HOUSE 0.37 5. MV/SCU /CUJOURNALIST LOOKING AT HEADLINE ABOUT HANNELORE'S DEATH IN BILD ZEITUNG NEWSPAPER; SCU NEWSPAPER ARTICLE (3 SHOTS) 0.50 6. MV HANNELORE KOHL'S BODY IS CARRIED OUT OF HOUSE ON STRETCHER AND PUT INTO HEARSE 1.21 7. SLV HELMUT KOHL SHAKES POLICEMAN'S HAND 1.31 8. SLV HEARSE LEAVES HOUSE, DRIVES DOWN STREET; CARS LEAVE (2 SHOTS) 2.04 (U5) STUTTGART, GERMANY (FILE: OCTOBER 3, 1997) (REUTERS) 9. MV HANNELORE AND HELMUT KOHL SEATED AT REUNIFICATION CEREMONY WITH FORMER SOVIET PRESIDENT MIKHAIL GORBACHEV AND WIFE RAISSA 10. NV BARBARA BUSH WALKING HAND IN HAND WITH HANNELORE KOHL ON THE OCCASION OF THEN U.S. PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH'S VISIT TO GERMANY (2 SHOTS) 2.52 Initials Script is copyright Reuters Limited. All rights reserved
  • Embargoed: 22nd July 2001 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: OGGERSHEIM AND STUTTGART, GERMANY
  • Country: Germany
  • Reuters ID: LVA2T1A6Q1J0Z579BTW3I49O5KEF
  • Story Text: Tributes have been pouring in from around th
    world for Hannelore Kohl, wife of former German
    Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who committed suicide
    on Thursday.

    Neighbours in Oggersheim, the leafy suburb of Ludwigshafen
    that was Kohl's Rhineland political fiefdom, on Friday (July
    6) 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.

    Undertakers drove the body away in a silver-coloured hearse.

    A funeral was already 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 was told in the Reichstag
    that his chauffeur's wife had found Hannelore's body, and
    rushed
    to the family home, had spent time with a Catholic priest.

    Crippled with pain from a rare allergy to light that had
    kept her all but a prisoner in recent years at her suburban
    home in the southwestern city of 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.

    Though never a first lady to relish the limelight in the way
    of Gorbachevs 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.

    Her contribution to Kohl's career, as helpmate 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.


  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2015. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register