Former German President Kohaler dies

Former German President Horst Kohaler died on Saturday after a brief illness at the age of 81, the President’s office announced in Berlin.

Selected on May 23, 2004 and confirmed the office for a second term after five years, he resigned unexpectedly on 31 May 2010.

President Frank-Walter Steinmier paid tribute to his predecessor in a message to Eva Luis Kohlar, a widow of Kohlar, described him as “a stroke of luck for our country”.

“We may only be deeply grateful that we were able to experience Horst Kohlar as the ninth President of the German Federal Republic. He gave a lot to the country,” Steinmier wrote.

Chancellor Olaf Scools posted on X that Germany had “lost a politician, who worked for his life and more justly world.”

Opposition leader Frederick Merz said that Kohler served the country with “decency, clarity and great passion.” Germany lost a true Democrat and a politician, he said.

Kohlar was the first President to assume office without political affiliation. He started a career in 1976 as a civil servant in the Ministry of Economy in 1976 after studying economics after growing as State Secretary in the Ministry of Finance in 1990.

Kohaler served as the main negotiator of Germany in the runup for the 1992 Mastrich Treaty, which led to the euros.

In 1993, he moved into the private sector, serving Germany’s powerful savings and high road banks, before being appointed as the chairman of the European bank for reconstruction and development in London. In 2000, he became the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund.

Johannes Rau was selected to succeed as President, a large -scale formal role in Germany, re -elected in 2009. His resignation came as a blow a year later and is unique in Germany’s recent history.

This came after an unfortunate remark in a radio interview about Germany’s participation in the struggle in Afghanistan, in which he connected the deployment of the German army to the country’s economic interests.

He was criticized for justifying Afghan deployment on economic grounds – an allegation that he denied. Nevertheless, he caused irreplacement to his situation and attracted the results.

In the office, Kohaler took controversial decisions, refused to sign the necessary law under the Constitution on the occasion. His role in maneuver to dissolve the Parliament at the behest of the then Chancellor Gerhard Shrode in 2005 was controversial at that time.

Kohlar was a curious lawyer for Africa during his career and was a United Nations special envoy for Western Sahara between 2017 and 2019. After his resignation, Kohalar kept out of domestic politics, but served the head of a council on climate change.