Kohl's Silence a Sign of His 'Super-Ego'

By CAROL J. WILLIAMS

Jan. 22, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

BERLIN — Helmut Kohl’s infallible memory for every local politician’s birthday and his easy, back-slapping manner with both country bumpkins and world leaders often evoked the image of big-city machine politicians.

But as the legendary “chancellor of unity” has free-fallen into dishonor, those old connections and comrades are abandoning him in droves, making a pariah of one of the Cold War’s most visible heroes and provoking new comparisons--with big-city crime bosses.

Stunned Germans are asking themselves why Kohl has further shattered his brilliant career by refusing to disclose the names of businesses or big shots who slipped his Christian Democratic Union illegal donations.

They are baffled by why he won’t spare the party he has served for half a century additional damage as it faces vital state elections. They wonder how he can be indifferent to gathering doubts abroad about Germany’s democratic credentials. Why, they ask incredulously, not give in and save the last shreds of a once-monumental reputation?

Because he’s Helmut Kohl, that’s why.

He’s the wise man who kept his head and railroaded through German reunification in the post-Communist confusion. He’s the steady helmsman elected time and again to steer the economic powerhouse of Europe. He’s the brilliant strategist who survived 16 years in power by invoking the sitzkrieg--the sitting battle--his trademark refusal to budge from any position.

“For many years, this was his method of dealing with opposition. He simply put down his head and plowed onward,” said Oskar Niedermayer, a professor of political science at Berlin’s Free University. “He’s always had the impression he could do whatever he wants and that his own ideas were the best ones.”

Like most commentators and analysts poring over Germany’s stunning political crisis, Niedermayer believes that Kohl, 69, is fully aware of the damage his refusal to cooperate with investigators is inflicting on his party. The professor also shares the prevailing view that Kohl’s stubborn defiance of both public pressure and the logic of self-preservation is the consequence of his having been in power far too long.

“Almost any time you have someone retiring from a position of power, he has serious problems accepting the new situation,” psychoanalyst Micha Hilgers said. “He falls into a depressive state and fights against this depression by simply going on exactly as he did before, as if nothing has changed.”

Hilgers described Kohl as an arrogant autocrat so sure of himself that he will destroy his own legacy before heeding the advice of others.

And the German people who initially applauded Kohl’s sense of conscience have lately turned, like the political tide, strongly against him. A poll released Friday by the respected Emnid organization indicated that 66% of respondents wanted Kohl to reveal the sources of the illegal payments and that 59% believed he should resign the parliament seat that is his last vestige of power.

Kohl’s image as one of Europe’s greatest 20th century statesmen is in tatters, but historians, political scientists, psychologists and former colleagues speak with one voice in predicting he will go to jail or to his grave before he buckles under mounting pressure to name names.

“I don’t expect him to change his behavior. He’s gone on so long in this way that to give in now would cause everyone to ask why he didn’t do it earlier and spare the party all this damage,” historian Michael Stuermer said.

“Whenever you have people in power for 10 years or more, you have this kind of feudal system that develops,” said Stuermer, describing German politics as suffering from a deep moral malaise. “It’s not just a problem in Germany or just in the CDU.”

During his 16 years as chancellor, Kohl developed a reputation as a strong-willed leader dismissive of compromise. Those who dared challenge him were cast into political exile, creating a system of unchecked personal power and an ideological vacuum.

“He is a super-ego,” said one former colleague who spoke on condition he not be identified. “Ever since 1990, when he helped to change the world, his ego has continued to grow to alarming proportions.”

Many Germans stood by Kohl early in the crisis, with polls and talk-show participants expressing admiration for his vow to keep his “word of honor” after a Nov. 30 admission that he had taken at least $1 million in illegal donations. Independent reports have alleged other dubious transfers, putting the amount of hidden payments at more than $10 million.

Now that Kohl, who lost the chancellorship in 1998, has been forced to resign as honorary chairman of his party and the scandal has widened to ensnare other senior party officials, Germans are less comfortable with Kohl’s silence. A CDU finance official’s suicide Thursday deepened public concern that Kohl is dragging others down with him.

“Helmut Kohl cannot put himself above the law. . . . He has to name the donors,” said Guenter Borgmann, a 61-year-old Defense Ministry employee. “Everything this man did for the country has been destroyed by his current behavior.”

Even those who say they still stand by Kohl, like pensioners Reiner and Agnes Schmitter, describe themselves as “massively disappointed.”

Shock seems the overwhelming emotion among older Germans, while the young say they are disillusioned, disgusted and angry.

“Helmut Kohl has damaged the entire image of Germany through his pigheadedness,” said 18-year-old student Simone Pricht, asked while out shopping what she makes of the crisis that has dominated German news for weeks and prompted broad reflection on this country’s political system.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats have been rising in the polls ahead of next month’s state election in Schleswig-Holstein as respondents reject the CDU in the wake of the scandal. But the same surveys show broad skepticism that shady financing practices are restricted to the CDU. The Emnid poll found 89% of respondents believed “affairs and corruption occur in all parties.”

Kohl’s behavior exudes “hubris and cynicism” that damage public confidence in the political system, said Juergen Falter, a research professor on electoral and political party issues at Mainz University.

“He must have serious reasons for concluding it is best to say nothing. He must believe that it would be even worse for the party if he talked,” said Falter, who added that he is convinced Kohl never broke the law for self-enrichment.

While Kohl’s silence has exposed him to widespread condemnation at home and suspicion abroad, Falter and most analysts said they believe Kohl’s legacy as the architect of reunification and the European Union will one day recover.

Historian Stuermer likewise expects Kohl’s image to be restored to respectability in the future, in the manner of Richard Nixon’s by the time of his death more than two decades after the Watergate scandal. And he describes as “absurd” the warnings of some that Germany’s commitment to democratic ideals is now in question.

“It’s only because we have democracy that all this has come to light. In a dictatorship, it’s very easy to keep such matters quiet,” Stuermer said. “If we were hit by this scandal in the depths of an economic crisis, it would be a different story. But this is not the Germany of the 1930s.”

That said, he added that he fears the CDU’s conservative constituents could drift toward the far right if the party fails to reform itself in the next couple of years.

A collapse of public confidence in the mainstream parties, he said, could lead to a “realm of the dissatisfied.”