Hannelore Kohl

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Hannelore Kohl (1991)

Johanna Klara Eleonore "Hannelore" Kohl , née Renner (born March 7, 1933 in Berlin ; † July 5, 2001 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein ), was the first wife of the former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl .

Life

Origin and childhood

Hannelore Kohl was born in 1933 as the only child of the engineer and later military manager Wilhelm Renner (1890–1952) and his wife Irene (1897–1980, nee Merling) in Berlin-Schöneberg . In the same year the family moved to Leipzig . After the devastating air raid on Leipzig in December 1943, Hannelore and her mother were evacuated first to Grimma and later to Döbeln , where they attended the local grammar school. In another area attack on Leipzig in February 1945, the parents' house was also destroyed.

End of the war and escape

In the last days of the war Hannelore Kohl was raped several times by Soviet soldiers at the age of twelve and, in her words, thrown “like a cement sack” out of the window. As a result of the abuse, she sustained a vertebral injury that she suffered from for life. On May 5, 1945, a few days before the end of the war , the twelve-year-old Hannelore and her mother fled by handcart first to Taucha , from there together with her father to West Germany and in July 1945 they reached Mother City in what is now Rhineland-Palatinate. Since the local parents' house of the Father was destroyed by the events of war, the family first lived in a 12  m² large laundry room that was shared by hung in the room ceiling in living room and bedroom. How many children of the postwar period, she suffered even more than the hunger winter of 1946-47 addition to malnutrition .

education

Although Hannelore Kohl had not yet reached the required minimum age, she completed the French central high school diploma prescribed by the occupying forces in 1951 . In the same year she began studying at the Department of Linguistics at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germersheim . Due to the early death of her father, she had to give up her studies in 1952 for economic reasons. First she found a job at Kohlhammer Verlag in Stuttgart; from 1953 to 1960 she worked as a commercial clerk at BASF in Ludwigshafen .

Marriage to Helmut Kohl

Hannelore Kohl and her family in 1975 during a private stay in Leipzig

At a school festival in Ludwigshafen in 1948, at the age of fifteen, Hannelore Renner met eighteen-year-old Helmut Kohl (1930-2017), whom she married on June 27, 1960 after having been acquainted for twelve years. From the birth of her two sons Walter (* 1963) and Peter (* 1965), Hannelore Kohl devoted herself entirely to their upbringing. She kept her distance from politics, which she could never completely escape. They kept the sons away from party business.

When Helmut Kohl was elected Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1969 , she was the youngest “mother of the country” in Germany at the age of 36. Despite the increasing interest of journalists, especially later as Chancellor's wife, it was important to her to keep the children out of the media.

In the early 1970s, the Red Army Faction (RAF) began to carry out attacks and other acts of violence against, among others, top political figures. Family friends were among those killed by the RAF. As Prime Minister and Federal Chairman of the CDU, Helmut Kohl was also particularly at risk. The threat and constant fear for the life of the family meant a permanent burden for them and the feeling of being helplessly at the mercy of a forced situation of violence.

At the beginning of the 1980s, when Helmut Kohl, as opposition leader, supported the controversial NATO double decision initiated by the incumbent Chancellor Helmut Schmidt , Hannelore Kohl was also publicly insulted and physically attacked during demonstrations by the peace movement . In addition, rallies in front of the house in Oggersheim put a strain on the family's private life. The events were perceived by the family members as kin .

In public, however, she always corresponded to the image of the happy wife, as was expected of her. She was always ready to maintain discipline under all circumstances.

Working as Chancellor's wife

Hannelore Kohl was fluent in English and French . She used these skills to deal with state guests and sometimes developed friendly relationships with the wives of the statesmen.

According to Helmut Kohl's uncontested reports, Hannelore Kohl participated in the so-called ten-point program to achieve German unity and independence. Helmut Kohl himself presented this program to the German Bundestag on November 28, 1989, without consulting his coalition partner .

Abuse

After the election of her husband as opposition leader in the German Bundestag and especially during his time as Federal Chancellor, Hannelore Kohl was also exposed to dirt campaigns and defamatory abuse. While her husband was often referred to as a " pear ", she was ridiculed as a stupid and " Barbie from the Palatinate". In addition, there was the provocative denigration of the couple in the 1987 song Helmut K. from the band Die Ärzte .

In the CDU donation affair uncovered in 1999 , Hannelore Kohl unsuccessfully urged her husband to name the donors. On the street she was spat at for her husband's behavior and publicly insulted as a "donation whore".

voluntary work

In 1983 she founded the ZNS Board of Trustees (renamed ZNS - Hannelore Kohl Foundation ) for brain injured accident victims with traumatic brain injury and became its president. The topic of brain injuries whose mental abilities were still frequently found at the time in question, was by then in Germany in public still often considered taboo . In 1985 she was honored for her social commitment with the Bambi , which she had auctioned for the benefit of the CNS .

On your initiative, the entrepreneur Heinz Nixdorf implemented suitable user interfaces for communication between PC and brain-injured patients. The BDH Clinic Hessisch Oldendorf was the first clinic to be equipped with a corresponding system with the support of the CNS . In 1986 she presented the project Computers help heal and live, supported by Nixdorf Computer AG .

In addition, she organized charity events for the benefit of the ZNS , such as the Up with People concerts in Bonn 's Beethovenhalle , where she served the guests at the buffet herself, and acted as the patron of charity events such as the “ Star Ball ”. In 1993 she founded the Hannelore Kohl Foundation for accident victims to promote the rehabilitation of people with brain injuries. V. , with which research in the field of neuro-rehabilitation was also supported.

A year before her suicide, a journalist from West German Broadcasting Corporation charged her with money laundering and infidelity in her work for the CNS and the Foundation. She perceived this as preparation for character assassination and as an attempt to destroy her public life's work. Although the allegations were refuted, she came under considerable psychological and existential pressure.

Sickness and death

Hannelore Kohl had been known to have a penicillin allergy since the late 1960s . Since then, care has been taken to ensure that she no longer came into contact with this substance. In February 1993 she was given an antibiotic because of an infection, which, due to a medical malpractice , contained a substance similar to penicillin. The ingestion led to an initially life-threatening condition; this allergic reaction, diagnosed as Lyell's syndrome , required weeks of hospitalization.

Grave site in Ludwigshafen-Friesenheim

Since then she has suffered from a curable light allergy , possibly light urticaria . The disease, which initially seemed manageable, reappeared more intensely from 2000: From May 2000, she could only leave the house, which was darkened during the day, after sunset. According to her husband in interviews he gave several years later, she was in excruciating pain. Due to her illness, she was unable to attend the wedding of her son Peter Kohl with his Turkish partner on May 28, 2001 in Istanbul.

With an overdose of tablets, Hannelore Kohl committed suicide on July 5, 2001 at the age of 68 while her husband was in Berlin. She left a suicide note for him and her sons. No autopsy was performed. Most recently, she had worked with her husband on his memoir, as she said in one of her last interviews.

There was numerous public speculation about the circumstances of Hannelore Kohl's illness and death. Psychosomatic reasons were also brought up : in the discussion about the CDU donation affair from the end of 1999, attempts were made to involve her too in order to harm her husband. The (unjustified) allegations that she had stashed money for the ZNS Board of Trustees she founded during her voluntary work left her deeply injured. Previously trusted people and organizations supporting them let them down.

The funeral ceremony took place in Speyer Cathedral with a large participation of the population according to the Catholic rite . Then she was buried in the family grave at the Ludwigshafen-Friesenheim cemetery , where her in-laws are also buried.

Awards

For her services to brain injured accident victims, Kohl was named "Honorary Florian" of the Siegburg volunteer fire department in 1990

Naming

  • The ZNS - Hannelore Kohl Foundation has been awarding a Hannelore Kohl sponsorship award to young scientists for achievements in the field of rehabilitation of brain injured people since 1993 .
  • In memory of Hannelore Kohl, the city of Ludwigshafen named a promenade on the Rhine after her in May 2004 .
  • A waking coma center in Bennewitz , Saxony , is named after Hannelore Kohl.

Theater, radio play

  • Johann Kresnik's dance piece Hannelore Kohl , which premiered in December 2004 at the Bonn Opera , is about the painful life story of Hannelore Kohl .

In his radio play Hannelore or So a photographed life wants to be coped with , Patrick Findeis reflects on her life in a fictional dialogue.

Works

  • Hannelore Kohl (Hrsg.): Culinary journey through German land. Zabert Sandmann, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-924678-87-1 (with texts by Helmut Kohl).
  • Hannelore Kohl: What journalists “do”. Palatine publishing house, Landau / Pfalz 1986, ISBN 3-87629-098-8 (cookbook).

literature

Web links

Commons : Hannelore Kohl  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: Hannelore Kohl  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Dona Kujacinski, Peter Kohl : Hannelore Kohl - your life. Droemer Knaur , Munich 2002, ISBN 978-3-4267-7660-5 .
  2. ↑ a b Jan Fleischhauer : Longing for the end. In: Der Spiegel 24/2011 from June 11, 2011.
  3. ↑ The woman behind the tank. In: Zeit Online / Tagesspiegel , June 14, 2011.
  4. ↑ Biography on fembio.org , accessed June 10, 2011
  5. ↑ The misunderstood. In: Hamburger Abendblatt of July 24, 2011. Accessed June 5, 2016.
  6. ↑ Our Papa Kohl. In: Die Tageszeitung from September 27, 2012. Retrieved June 19, 2017.
  7. ↑ That was unbearable. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine from November 26, 2011. Retrieved June 12, 2016.
  8. ^ The Bonn Beethoven Hall as a place of democracy. (PDF; 35.33 kB) Speech in the Beethovenhalle on October 1, 2011. Accessed June 4, 2016.
  9. ↑ The life of a country mother. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of February 26, 2002. Accessed May 7, 2016.
  10. ↑ Death did not come overnight . In: stern.de . June 19, 2011 ( stern.de [accessed June 16, 2017]).
  11. ↑ Sonja Kastilan: Puzzling light allergy. In: The world . July 7, 2001, accessed March 23, 2015 .
  12. ^ A b Johanna Kaack: ZDF-History: The two lives of Hannelore Kohl. 2014, aired on February 25, 2015, from around the 30th minute.
  13. ↑ Heribert Schwan: The woman at his side. Life and suffering of Hannelore Kohl. Heyne, Munich 2011.
  14. ↑ Hannelore Kohl's farewell letter to her husband. In: welt.de. July 22, 2001. Retrieved June 30, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Hannelore Kohl: It was suicide. In: RP online. July 5, 2001, accessed March 23, 2015 .
  16. ↑ Doubts about the nature of the disease. Interview with Herbert Hönigsmann, specialist in light allergies. July 11, 2001, archived from the original on February 1, 2014 ; accessed on March 23, 2015 .
  17. ↑ The life of a country mother. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of February 26, 2002. Retrieved on August 6, 2016.
  18. ^ Kohl funeral service: His measure and their mass. In: Der Tagesspiegel . July 21, 2001, accessed March 23, 2015 .
  19. ^ Klaus Nerger: Hannelore Kohl. The grave. In: knerger.de. March 19, 2015, accessed March 23, 2015 .
  20. ↑ I am burning from within. In: Der Spiegel. July 9, 2001
  21. ↑ Hannelore or Such a photographed life wants to be coped with , radio play
personal data
SURNAME Kohl, Hannelore
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Renner, Hannelore (maiden name); Kohl, Johanna Klara Eleonore (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German foreign language correspondent, wife of the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1933
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH July 5, 2001
Place of death Ludwigshafen am Rhein