Someone who sat everything out died. How I remember "Birne".

Helmut, here is your bloody flag.

He made provincialism a political asset.

He revolutionized international diplomatic cuisine.

He made his wife commit suicide and his son never knew him.

Political corruption gave birth to a new word: Kohlruption.

The Thatcher-Kohl 'Just shoot me' meeting. Hilarious.

The Ugly German.
Margaret Thatcher’s relationship with German chancellor Helmut Kohl was so bad that the US feared she was preparing an entente cordiale with the Soviet Union to contain Germany, declassified files show.

To cap it all off:

Margaret Thatcher's diplomacy was less concerned with making friends than with winning battles. That had a downside in her relationship with Chancellor Kohl, who went to great pains to win her friendship.

This extended to inviting her to spend a weekend in his home-town in the Rhineland, including a visit to his favourite tavern to sample his favourite dish of pig's stomach.

Her appetite seemed mysteriously to fade as the German leader went back for seconds and thirds. We moved on to the great crypt of the Romanesque Cathedral of Speyer where she was invited to inspect the tombs of Holy Roman Emperors, precursors of earlier attempts at European union.

While she undertook this task without visible enthusiasm, Chancellor Kohl took me behind a pillar and said: "Now she's seen me here in my home-town, right at the heart of Europe and on the border with France, surely she will understand that I am not just German, I am European. You must convince her."

I accepted the assignment with trepidation. As soon as we boarded our aircraft for the return to Britain, Mrs Thatcher threw herself into her seat, kicked off her shoes and announced with the finality which was her trademark: "My God, that man is so German."

Gutless, I aborted my mission to persuade her otherwise.

He ruled as chancellor for 16 years, yet I have met no one who said he/she voted for him. Strange things happen in Germany.

Kohl jokes were legend

My favorite still is the thermos flask joke:
Three politician talk about the most important invention in their opinion. For one it's the bicycle, for the other the car.
"To me the best invention is the thermos," says Helmut Kohl. "Why that?" Ask the other two astonished. "Well, in winter Hannelore fills it with hot tea, which stays hot all day long, and in the summer it is cold lemonade, which remains cold all day. How does the thermos know when it is winter and when summer? "

Priceless Helmut Kohl one-liners:

"Anyone who travels from my home country to Alsace in the Palatinate, travels from Europe to Europe. This is a fascinating development."

"The majority of the German women is female."

"I do not know what my friend Mitterrand thinks about it, but I think the same way."

The awful chair

“Either this wallpaper goes or I do.” — Oscar Wilde