Helmut Schmidt

Helmut Schmidt was the elder of two sons to Ludovica Koch (10 November 1890 – 29 November 1968) and Gustav Ludwig Schmidt (18 April 1888 – 26 March 1981) in Barmbek, a working-class district of Hamburg, in 1918. Schmidt studied at Hamburg Lichtwark School, graduating in 1937. Schmidt's father was born the biological son of a German Jewish banker; Ludwig Gumpel, and a Christian waitress, Friederike Wenzel, and then covertly adopted, although this was kept a family secret for many years. This was confirmed publicly by Schmidt in 1984, after Valéry Giscard d'Estaing revealed the fact to journalists, apparently with Schmidt's assent. Helmut Schmidt was a non-practising Protestant.

Schmidt was a group leader (Scharführer) in the Hitler Youth organisation until 1936, when he was demoted and sent on leave because of his anti-Nazi views. However, documents from 1942 praise his "Impeccable national socialist [Nazi] behaviour", and in 1944 his superiors mentioned that Schmidt "stands the ground of national socialist ideology, knowing that he must pass it on." On 27 June 1942, he married his childhood sweetheart Hannelore "Loki" Glaser (3 March 1919 – 21 October 2010). They had two children: Helmut Walter (26 June 1944 – 19 February 1945, died of meningitis), and Susanne (born 8 May 1947), who works in London for Bloomberg Television. Schmidt resumed his education in Hamburg after the war, graduating in economics and political science in 1949.

Schmidt admired the philosopher Karl Popper, and contributed a foreword to the 1982 Festschrift in Popper's honour.

Schmidt was a talented pianist and recorded piano concertos of both Mozart and Bach with German pianist and conductor Christoph Eschenbach. Schmidt recorded Mozart's piano concerto for three pianos, K. 242, with the London Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Eschenbach in 1982 with pianists Eschenbach and Justus Frantz for EMI Records (CDC 7 47473 2). In that recording, according to the CDs liner notes, Schmidt played the part written for Countess Antonia Lodron's youngest daughter Giuseppina, "almost a beginner" who commissioned the work. The part brilliantly "enables any reasonably practised amateur to participate in a performance". The same musical notes also indicate that Schmidt and Frantz had played duets during Frantz's student days. In 1990 Schmidt joined Eschenbach, Frantz, Gerhard Oppitz and the Hamburg Philharmonic Orchestra in Deutsche Grammophon's recording of Bach's Concerto in A minor for four harpsichords, BWV 1065.

All his adult life, Schmidt was a heavy smoker. He was well known for lighting up during TV interviews and talk shows. On 13 October 1981, Schmidt was fitted with a cardiac pacemaker. On 24 August 2002, he suffered a heart attack and subsequently underwent bypass surgery.

On 25 January 2008, German police launched an inquiry after an anti-smoking initiative charged that Schmidt was defying the recently introduced smoking ban. The initiative claimed that Schmidt had been flagrantly ignoring anti-smoking laws. Despite pictures in the press, the case was subsequently dropped after the public prosecutor's office ruled that Schmidt's actions had not been a threat to public health.

On 6 April 2010, with a lifespan of 33,342 days, he surpassed Konrad Adenauer in terms of longevity, and at the time of his death was the oldest former chancellor in German history.

His wife of 68 years, Loki Schmidt, died on 21 October 2010, aged 91.

At the beginning of August 2012, Schmidt gave an interview on German television and revealed that at 93 years of age, he had fallen in love again. His new life partner was his associate of over 57 years, Ruth Loah (27 September 1933 – 23 February 2017).

Foundations

The Bundeskanzler-Helmut-Schmidt-Stiftung was established in 2016 by the German Bundestag as one of six non-partisan foundations commemorating politicians. It aims to honour Helmut Schmidt's historic achievements and to work on political issues Helmut Schmidt was concerned with throughout his political life and which have lost none of their relevance today. The foundation's headquarters are located in Hamburg.

Return to federal politics

In 1965, he was re-elected to the Bundestag. In 1967, after the formation of the Grand Coalition between the SPD and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), he became chairman of the Social Democratic parliamentary party, a post he held until the elections of 1969. In 1968, he was elected deputy party chairman, a post that he held until 1983. Unlike Willy Brandt and Gerhard Schröder, he never became chairman of the party.

In October 1969, he entered the government of Willy Brandt as defence minister. During his term in office, the military conscription time was reduced from 18 to 15 months, while at the same time increasing the number of young men being conscripted. Additionally, Schmidt decided to introduce the Bundeswehr universities Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg and the University of the Bundeswehr Munich in Neubiberg (Munich district) to broaden the academic education of the German officer corps, and the situation of non-commissioned officers was improved. In July 1972, he succeeded Karl Schiller as Minister for Economics and Finance, but in November 1972, he relinquished the Economics department, which was again made a separate ministry. Schmidt remained Minister of Finance and faced the prospect of rising inflation. Shortly before the Oil Shock of 1973, which rattled Britain and the United States, Schmidt agreed that European currencies should be floated against the US dollar. He remained in charge of finance until May 1974.

Life after politics

In 1982, along with his friend Gerald Ford, he co-founded the annual AEI World Forum. The following year, he joined the nationwide weekly Die Zeit newspaper as co-publisher, also acting as its director from 1985 to 1989. In 1985, he became managing director. With Takeo Fukuda, he founded the Inter Action Councils in 1983. He retired from the Bundestag in 1986. In December 1986, he was one of the founders of the committee supporting the EMU and the creation of the European Central Bank.

Contrary to the line of his party, Schmidt was a determined opponent of Turkey's bid to join the EU. He also opposed phasing out nuclear energy, something that the Red-Green coalition of Gerhard Schröder supported. In 2007, Schmidt described the climate debate as "hysterically overheated". When asked about social media, Schmidt said he perceived the internet as "threatening". He was particularly concerned about the superficiality of communication on the web.

Schmidt was highly critical of allowing immigration from outside of Europe, believing that people from these cultures would not integrate well. He said in a 2004 interview with Hamburger Abendblatt that "a multicultural society can function peacefully only under a strong authoritarian state like Singapore, the cultures there all speak English and the political system is based on authority." In 2005, he spoke out against attempts to remedy Germany's aging population with more immigration: "Immigration of people from East of Anatolia or from Subsaharan Africa does not solve the problem, it only creates a much bigger problem." In a 2010 interview with Sandra Maischberger, he said that "Immigration from foreign civilisations creates more problems than it can bring us in terms of benefits on the labour market. Immigration from Europe is no problem; the problem starts from somewhat more eastern regions. These are different cultures, not because of their different genes or ancestry, but because of the way they were raised."

On 16 May 2014, Schmidt said the Russo-Ukrainian War was dangerous, because, "Europe, the Americans and also Russia are behaving in a way that Christopher Clark described in his book The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 that's very much worth reading, as the beginning of World War I: like sleepwalkers." Clark later disputed comparisons between the Russo-Ukrainian War and World War I, saying in 2022, "The first world war began in an incredibly complex, around-the-houses way. Whereas in the case of the invasion of Ukraine, in 2014 and this year, it's quite clearly a case of the breach of the peace by just one power."

Schmidt was the author of numerous books on his political life, on foreign policy, and political ethics. He made appearances in numerous television talk shows and remained one of the most renowned political publicists in Germany until his death.

In his later years, Schmidt gained a positive reputation as an elder statesman across party lines in Germany.

In 2017, after Minister of Defence Ursula von der Leyen issued an order to remove Wehrmacht memorabilia from barracks and other institutions of the Bundeswehr, a photo of the young Lieutenant Helmut Schmidt in Wehrmacht uniform was removed from the military's Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg. Although the photo is now displayed again, the initial decision has caused a debate over Schmidt's service in the Wehrmacht. According to Der Spiegel, von der Leyen initially distanced herself from this decision, yet after a few days, she explained that Schmidt, as Minister of Defense and later Chancellor, was important in the formation of the Bundeswehr as a democratic army, but his time in the Wehrmacht had nothing to do with this. Historian Michael Wolffsohn argues that Schmidt avoided explaining about "what he had done between 1940 and 1945." He further comments that the whole Schmidt affair reveals that while the Bundeswehr is not "a state within a state", there is an uncritical milieu in the Bundeswehr that does not correspond to the spirit of the majority in the German society and might get larger if unchecked. He recommends that the photo be displayed again, but with explanations. Theo Sommer, a prominent journalist and former Chief of Planning Staff for the Ministry of Defence, while agreeing that the military leadership should pay attention to extremism within the Bundeswehr, criticises von der Leyen for her overreaction and Wolffsohn for false representation of Schmidt's attitude. According to Sommer, Schmidt had always been frank about his service on the Eastern Front: while he denied that he had ever seen or known about mass extermination of Jews in Russia, Schmidt admitted he often had to shoot at villages and then recognised the smell of burnt flesh. Schmidt said the troops were never taught about the Geneva Conventions, and by standards of today, he would have to go to court "a dozen times". According to Der Spiegel, Schmidt dated his departure from "idea and practice of National Socialism" to 1942 and his recognition of the criminal character of the regime to 1944.