Horst Köhler was never a man to actively seek the limelight. Nevertheless, in the spring of 2010, he dominated the headlines across Germany for weeks. At that time he was Germany’s president, the largely ceremonial head of state. He had given an interview in which he commented on the , the country’s armed forces.
Referring to Germany, the then 67-year-old said “a country of our size which is orientated toward foreign trade and therefore heavily reliant on it, must also know that in case of doubt, in an emergency, military interventions could also be necessary to uphold our interests, for example secure trade routes.”
Outrage in Berlin political circles
This statement, it quickly became apparent, was a mistake. Attempting to justify the controversial military deployment to with securing trade routes unleashed criticism across party lines. “Ambiguous,” “a presidential misstep,” “extreme positions” and “highly dangerous” were only a few of the reactions in Berlin political circles.
It didn’t help the scolded Köhler that he only a little later announced that his statement was not in reference to the Afghanistan operation, but to a Bundeswehr engagement against piracy — and that his statements were consistent with a Bundeswehr White Paper published by the government in 2006, so they had been official government policy for years.
Köhler, deeply affected by the scale of the reaction, vacated his post. According to him, the criticism was unjustified and lacked “the necessary respect for my office.” Neither Chancellor nor his extremely high popularity rating among the population could prevent him from resigning.
The meteoric rise of a finance expert
The public image of Horst Köhler in Germany was shaped right up to the end by those misleading statements and his subsequent resignation. But his life’s work consisted of much more.
Born the seventh of eight children in 1943, in the German-occupied Polish town of Skierbieszow, he grew up in Saxony and Baden-Wurttemberg. He quickly made a career after studying economics in Tübingen and joining the conservative (CDU) in the early 1980s.
As a high-level official in the Finance Ministry, he was involved in negotiations around Germany’s reunification and the EU’s Maastricht Treaty. In the year 2000 he became the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, at the suggestion of then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
Despite holding positions of great responsibility, Köhler remained largely unknown to the general public. So much so, that when he took office as German president in the summer of 2004, one of the country’s large tabloids ran the headline “Horst who?”
Despite these difficult starting conditions, Köhler managed to become one of Germany’s most popular politicians. In opinion polls conducted during his six years in office, more than 70 percent of Germans consistently reported being “very satisfied” with the work of their president.
That was also because of his handling of the global financial crisis, which at the time also threatened to hit Germany with full force. As a former banker, Kohler knew his way around the issues and made no secret of his contempt for the greed in the industry. In May 2008 he described the financial markets as a “monster” that needed to be “put in its place.”
Köhler denounced injustices not only in relation to the financial jugglers, but also with regard to Africa — the continent he saw perish because of the ignorance and unscrupulousness of the so-called “first world.”
Special interest in Africa
Following his time as president, until shortly before his death, Köhler remained mostly active with regard to foreign affairs. His presidential successors have regularly called upon him to represent Germany in international affairs, above all in Africa.
His interest in the African continent, social projects, sustainable business and a humane globalization with reliable rules was not only altruistic, but grounded in political realism or “realpolitik.” An example is seen in a speech he gave in Hamburg in early 2018: “Giving perspectives to Africa’s youth is one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century. Here grows a power that is to be reckoned with, for better or for worse.”
In 2012, then-United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon appointed him to a committee working on global development goals. In 2017, Köhler became the United Nations special envoy for Western Sahara. His task was to resolve the When Köhler left the role in May 2019 for health reasons, both parties in the conflict — the Rabat government and the Polisario Front — noted this step with regret and
Köhler hardly ever commented on current domestic political issues after his resignation. In 2021, he showed that climate protection was an important issue for him when he took over the patronage of the first nationwide citizens’ council for climate policy. A foundation set up by Köhler and his wife promotes research into rare diseases.
Horst Köhler, who lived alternately in Berlin and Chiemgau in Bavaria, is
This article was translated from German.
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