HAMBURG: If reconciling contradictions is the art of politics, Chancellor Helmut Kohl is a gifted performer. For 14 years this former provincial boss of tiny Rhineland-Palatina has dominated Germany and Europe; in late October he becomes the longest-serving post-war German Chancellor. A man of massive physique which he unsuccessfully tries to reduce by annual visits to a healthfarm, Kohl is politically nimble, particularly in diplomacy. Here he combines old-fashioned German patriotism with a determination to weld his nation into the European Union. In the West, he is both a European integrationist and an Atlanticist. Towards the East, many contradictions must be reconciled.
HAMBURG: If reconciling contradictions is the art of politics, Chancellor Helmut Kohl is a gifted performer. For 14 years this former provincial boss of tiny Rhineland-Palatina has dominated Germany and Europe; in late October he becomes the longest-serving post-war German Chancellor. A man of massive physique which he unsuccessfully tries to reduce by annual visits to a healthfarm, Kohl is politically nimble, particularly in diplomacy. Here he combines old-fashioned German patriotism with a determination to weld his nation into the European Union. In the West, he is both a European integrationist and an Atlanticist. Towards the East, many contradictions must be reconciled.