Marco Urban/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo

Wolfgang Schäuble on August 19, 2010 during an interview in his office at the Federal Ministry of Finance in Berlin.

Overview – Skip to a certain paragraph:

☛ Early Years

☛ Matchmaker of the Early Kohl Era

☛ Minister of the Interior and Architect of German Reunification

☛ Parliamentary Group Chairman and Chancellor Contender

☛ Party Leader in the Turmoil of the Donations Affair

☛ Minister Under Merkel in the Euro Crisis

☛ Elder Statesman of Parliament and the Party

☛ Summary

Early Years

Wolfgang Schäuble grew up in Hornberg, the second of three sons of the tax consultant Karl Schäuble and his wife Gertrud. After completing secondary education (Abitur), he studied law in Freiburg and Hamburg, followed by a doctorate, legal clerkship and entry into the fiscal administration. In 1969, he married the economist Ingeborg Hensle, with whom he had a son and three daughters.

After joining the CDU in 1965, Schäuble was elected chairman of the South Baden branch of the CDU youth organisation, the Junge Union, four years later. In the early Bundestag elections of 1972, he won the direct mandate for the constituency of Offenburg, which he has held with an unassailable majority ever since. Early on, he became regarded as an active supporter of Helmut Kohl, the minister president of Rhineland-Palatinate – first of all in 1971, during the contest for the party chairmanship, and later, in 1976 and 1980, during the chancellor candidacy disputes with the CSU and the concurrent threats of division within the parliamentary group in the Bundestag.

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Matchmaker of the Early Kohl Era

In 1981, Schäuble entered the inner circle of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group as one of four parliamentary secretaries. A year later, following Helmut Kohl’s election as federal chancellor, he was promoted to the post of first parliamentary secretary. Under the new parliamentary group chairman, Alfred Dregger, a representative of the conservative wing of the CDU/CSU who did not present any rivalry to Kohl’s leadership, Schäuble took on the role of an intellectually demanding and indispensable, though occasionally brusque, parliamentary party manager. With this post came the first bruises. In 1984, for example, in an attempt to defuse the Flick party donation affair, which had been a source of some trouble for the CDU/CSU, Schäuble introduced a bill to establish amnesty rules, but the proposal was defeated. In the same year, nonetheless, Schäuble advanced in his career thanks to that very same affair. Following the appointment of Minister of State Philipp Jenninger, as the president of the Bundestag, Kohl was in a position to reorganise the Federal Chancellery, which had up to then been susceptible to disruption. Schäuble was appointed head of the Chancellery with the title of Minister for Special Affairs. Besides the day-to-day management of the government and the coalition, Schäuble was responsible for coordinating the secret services and for inter-German policy – for example, in preparation for Honecker’s visit to Bonn in 1987. Efficient as he was, even Schäuble could not calm the difficult waters that the coalition was navigating at that time. Following its weak performance in the 1987 Bundestag elections, the tough disputes over planned tax reforms took a particular toll on the image of the coalition, not to mention on the Chancellor, whose political career seemed to be nearing its end in 1989.

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Minister of the Interior and Architect of German Reunification

In the spring of 1989, Kohl reacted to the growing challenges to his authority with a thorough cabinet reshuffle, which saw the somewhat restive Friedrich Zimmermann (CSU) replaced as Minister of the Interior by the more moderate Schäuble. Within a short period of time in this new role, Schäuble had succeeded in assuaging the conflicts between the CSU and the FDP over domestic and legal policy and had introduced an amendment to the law on foreign nationals. Concurrently, he supported Kohl in fending off a half-hearted internal challenge launched by Heiner Geißler, who had not been renominated as general secretary in the run-up to the Bremen CDU party conference of September 1989.

This thwarted revolt was followed by events of global historical importance, symbolised for many by the fall of the Berlin Wall. While Kohl, with unerring instinct, obtained approval for reunification from the Allied powers of the Second World War, and Finance Minister Theo Waigel prepared the monetary, economic and social union, it was Schäuble who held the reins in the negotiations for the legal integration of the GDR into the Federal Republic. In a matter of weeks, he managed to clarify the complex details with the GDR’s negotiator, Günther Krause, and brought a somewhat hesitant SPD on board in order to obtain the necessary majorities. The signing of the German Unification Treaty on 31 August 1990 was the historic zenith of Schäuble’s career.

It was all the more tragic that Schäuble fell victim to an assassination attempt just nine days after reunification, on 12 October 1990. At the end of an election campaign event in Oppenau, not far from Schäuble’s home in Gengenbach, a mentally deranged man approached Schäuble and fired a pistol, hitting him with several shots. One bullet shattered his spinal cord, causing paraplegia – from which his arms were only narrowly spared.

After this stroke of fate, it was initially uncertain whether Schäuble would continue his political career. He bore the disability, however, with an iron will, returning to his ministerial duties within a matter of weeks. Taking his health into consideration, he remained Minister of the Interior when the new government was formed in 1990–91. The authority he had acquired as the architect of German re-unification was clearly apparent during the historic Bundestag debate of 20 June 1991 on the future seat of parliament and government. Schäuble’s brief and forceful exhortation to move to Berlin (already the capital) tipped the scales, resulting in a narrow, unexpected defeat for the advocates of remaining in Bonn.

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Parliamentary Group Chairman and Chancellor Contender

At the end of 1991, there was a delayed change of guard in the parliamentary group. Unlike Alfred Dregger, who preceded him as chairman, Schäuble was perceived as a potential chancellor from the beginning. For all his loyalty to Kohl, the time had come for him to develop a future vision for the Union, to point the way beyond the era of the incumbent chancellor. Schäuble embodied a conservatism that was open to renewal, and which emphasised the importance of community values such as freedom, citizenship and sense of duty, to the extent of quite provocatively asserting a positive view of Germany as a nation, even national pride. He was emphatically critical of the hypertrophic state, of protecting vested interests and of following the status quo.

The more Kohl directed his attention to the big questions of foreign and European policy, the more Schäuble had to take care of the difficult domestic and economic policy agendas in day-to-day government. In the first Bundestag to include representatives from the states of the former GDR, his skills were particularly called upon for the reorganisation of asylum law, the introduction of long-term care insurance, and the acceptance of foreign deployments of the German Army. Having only achieved a slender majority in the 1994 Bundestag elections, the coalition of CDU/CSU and FDP made slow progress with measures to make Germany a more attractive location for foreign businesses and workers. In the end, the “Petersberg resolutions” on taxation, promoted by Schäuble, failed to come into effect owing to the resistance of the SPD in the Bundesrat. When Kohl decided, contrary to his earlier hints, to run again in the Bundestag election of 1997, this and the narrowness of the existing majority prevented what would have been a well-timed change in the chancellorship, putting Schäuble in a thankless waiting position.

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Party Leader in the Turmoil of the Donations Affair

Schäuble’s “programme for the future”, with proposals for ecological tax reform designed to send positive signals to the Greens, could not shield the Union from clear defeat in the 1998 elections. Now the party chairmanship fell unchallenged to him, as the parliamentary group chairman. His first personnel decision later proved to have been his most consequential. He chose Angela Merkel, the former environment minister, as the general secretary of the party. On the surface, Schäuble’s first year in office as opposition leader was remarkably successful. Due to the chaos that marked the beginnings of the Red-Green coalition under Gerhard Schröder, the CDU achieved spectacular electoral successes in 1999, regaining its influence in the Bundesrat through the change of government in state parliaments.

At first, it was hardly noticeable that Helmut Kohl, still omnipresent as Honorary Chairman, was preventing a clear orientation of the CDU towards Schäuble. This became clear in its full consequence in November 1999, when a party donation scandal of unprecedented proportions came to light in the CDU. Although Kohl bore the main responsibility, Schäuble was also implicated. The following weeks turned into a self-destructive power struggle between Kohl and Schäuble. Schäuble’s credibility became undermined because he had failed to declare the receipt of a cash donation of 100,000 DM to the parliamentary authorities, disputing its whereabouts publicly with the former CDU treasurer, Brigitte Baumeister. Meanwhile, shortly before Christmas 1999, without the knowledge of the party chairman, General Secretary Angela Merkel had placed herself at the head of the party reformers with a courageous newspaper article. While Merkel, untainted by the scandal, was increasingly seen as the Union’s new hope, Schäuble was obliged, in mid-February of 2000, to resign from the chairmanships of both the party and the parliamentary group.

Nevertheless, he remained a member of the national board of the CDU (Präsidium) and, following the 2002 Bundestag elections, also took on responsibility for foreign, security and European policy in the parliamentary group as Merkel’s deputy. Many looked to him as a candidate in the run-up to the 2004 election of the federal president, but in view of the narrow majority in the Federal Assembly, Merkel was sceptical of his chances of success. Together with FDP leader Guido Westerwelle, she proposed the IMF President Horst Köhler, who was little known in national politics. Having been passed over, Schäuble in turn refused Merkel’s request to take charge of economic and financial policy within the parliamentary group in place of Friedrich Merz, who had resigned. 

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Minister Under Merkel in the Euro Crisis

Following the early Bundestag elections of 2005 and the formation of a Union/SPD coalition, Schäuble returned to the Ministry of the Interior after fourteen years. Here he began with liberal moves in integration policy such as the establishment of a German Islam Conference. Of substantially more importance and politically more controversial was Schäuble’s policy on combatting international terrorism. Schäuble took a clear stance in speeches and with various draft laws – for example, on the use of biometric data in passports, the introduction of a central anti-terrorist file, the expansion of the authority of the Federal Criminal Police Office, and the deployment of the Bundeswehr in internal affairs, up to and including permission to shoot down hijacked aircraft if absolutely necessary.

Schäuble’s career took another unexpected turn after the 2009 Bundestag elections, which, thanks to a strengthened FDP, led to a new Union-Liberal coalition. Since FDP leader Westerwelle claimed the foreign ministry for himself, Chancellor Merkel was able to secure the more important Ministry of Finance for the CDU. In this new position, Schäuble, whose health was not always at its best, primarily faced the task of holding off the FDP’s ambitious demands for tax cuts while consolidating the federal budget – something that was urgently needed following the financial market crisis of 2008. Under his leadership, his ministry succeeded in presenting and implementing several budgets without further borrowing – for the first time since 1969.

The budgetary successes, however, paled against the backdrop of the dramatic currency and sovereign debt crisis that took hold of Europe in 2008 and thereafter. On the one hand, this could be seen as a direct consequence of the financial market crisis; on the other hand, the widespread tendency of many eurozone countries to keep the cost of public debt low and to collectivise risk had given rise to false signals and unfounded evaluations on the financial markets. Schäuble’s actions in the crisis were derived from the “core Europe” concept that he had formulated in 1994 together with the foreign policy expert Karl Lamers. As regards the monetary union, it was his consideration – in contrast to the FDP and large parts of the CDU/CSU – that a stronger communitarisation of monetary and financial policy was necessary as the core of integration. Those countries willing to do so would have to agree to a binding set of rules for the purpose of disciplining budgetary policies and stabilising the common currency. Chancellor Merkel was initially reluctant to agree to any joint rescue concepts for endangered countries, but finally put her reservations aside to pursue the higher priority of keeping the monetary union together with all of its member states. In the case of Greece, however, which notoriously tried to resist demands for budgetary restructuring and structural reforms, Schäuble considered it necessary that the country should leave the monetary union, at least temporarily. Although his insistence on a policy of austerity made Schäuble a controversial figure in Europe, he was subsequently awarded the prestigious Charlemagne Prize in 2012 for his political contribution to the European cause. The Euro crisis opened rifts in his already complicated relationship with the chancellor, which deepened during the refugee crisis of 2015–16. In summary, it can be said that the hectic crisis management of those years had mixed results: on the one hand, it succeeded in preserving the monetary union; on the other hand, against the weakening resistance of Germany, the culture of stability became diluted while debts and risks were communitised.

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Elder Statesman of Parliament and the Party

After the 2017 Bundestag elections, Schäuble withdrew from the unpredictable and tedious process of forming a government; instead he swiftly followed the call to succeed the long-serving president of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert. Schäuble’s authority and experience allowed him to settle quickly into the new role: as the guardian of due procedure in parliamentary debate in the face of the often provocative bearing of the AfD; as the representative of the Bundestag’s rights and authority vis-à-vis the federal government that it had elected during the Corona pandemic, and as the public authority on the political aspects of constitutional law and democracy. His influence in day-to-day politics was necessarily diminished. In the summer of 2018, however, as the elder statesman of the Union, he successfully mediated in an escalating dispute between party leaders Merkel and Seehofer over asylum and immigration policy. After Merkel’s withdrawal from the CDU party chairmanship, he supported Friedrich Merz’s unsuccessful candidacies for the post – in 2018 against Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and in 2020/2021 against Armin Laschet. He once again played a decisive role in the spring of 2021, when he backed the new CDU leader Laschet as the chancellor candidate against CSU leader Markus Söder.

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Summary

Even though the chancellorship remained out of his reach, Wolfgang Schäuble remains one of the most interesting figures that the CDU has brought forth in the course of its history, both in his political influence and in his intellectual versatility. As an accomplished, though not always faultless or undisputed ‘technician’ of the levers of power, he was a crucial pillar of Kohl’s lengthy chancellorship, earning historical achievements of his own with the negotiation of the German Unification Treaty. His early failure as party chairman in the wake of the party donations affair was, in the scheme of things, unavoidable and, though partly self-inflicted, not without a tragic aspect. Following his personal break with Helmut Kohl, the relationship that he built up with Kohl’s successor, Angela Merkel, was a complicated one, marked by shared successes and mutual dependencies as well as recurring disappointments and injuries. With a brand of conservatism derived from Protestant ethics, and a sceptical view of politics, bearing more communitarian than liberal traits, his influence on the development of the CDU’s programme following reunification was decisive. In many of the public debates on Germany’s future identity, he was the party’s most important voice. In particular, his thoughts on foreign and European policy will have a lasting effect. While affirming integration, he insisted on the need for sustainable institutions and robust rules to maintain order.

Wolfgang Schäuble died on December 26, 2023, surrounded by his family.

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The original german text was translated by Richard Toovey.