Editors Letter

Germany's Mystery Man

Helmut Kohl seems an unlikely figure in the pantheon of German heroes: compared with Frederick the Great or Bismarck, he has "all the charisma of a BMW branch manager." But Germany, so often misled by its Great Man theory of history, has found in Kohl, says Vanity Fair's correspondent T. D. Allman, a leader who's not merely given it a vision of the future but helped to put its horrible past to rest.

Who is he and how did he persuade Gorbachev and others to acquiesce to a united Germany? Allman set off by postponing his talks with Kohl himself. He went straight to the Berlin wall, and then traveled east and west, catching the echoes of history. "Had I started out to do a profile of one man," Allman says, "I would never have gotten to Kohl, or understood his place in German and European history."

Allman found a key to his search in a small industrial city on the Rhine. It struck him as the essence of modem Germany: a city permeated by the work ethic that has made West Germany so prosperous, but also a city that is astonishingly cosmopolitan, from its Chinese restaurants to its relatively large Muslim community. The city is Ludwigshafen, and it happens to be the 1930 birthplace of Kohl himself. It is as easy to underestimate the potential of Ludwigshafen as it is to underestimate Kohl, who is given to summing up his political philosophy in the words of a priest who was an early mentor: "Short speeches, long sausages." But when Allman spent time with Kohl, he found him a fascinating surprise. His oak-tree exterior conceals a knowledge of history and a sensitivity to its implications, qualities missing in the age of the sound-bite candidate. Here, Allman discovers, is a man who can climb to the top of a smokestack in Ludwigshafen and describe what he sees in terms of the history of Germany, its struggles with France, its bitterness after Versailles, and its treatment of the Jews. Yet, for all his education, his private kitchen cabinet in his Rhineland retreat is composed of shopkeepers, a parish priest, a union leader, and a pub owner.

In his report, on page 174, Allman concludes that the seeming provincialism and the very lack of subtlety which led people to underestimate Kohl are what enabled him to achieve his dream, one that nobody but himself ever imagined he would achieve.

Editor in Chief