Life
Kohl was born on 3 April 1930 in Ludwigshafen. He was the third child of Hans Kohl 1887–1975, a Bavarian army veteran and civil servant, and his wife, Cäcilie née Schnur; 1891–1979.
Kohl's category was conservative and Catholic, and remained loyal to the Catholic Centre Party before and after 1933. His elder brother died in World War II as a teenage soldier. At the age of ten, Kohl was obliged, like almost children in Germany at the time, to join the Deutsches Jungvolk, a detail of the Hitler Youth. Aged 15, on 20 April 1945, Kohl was sworn into the Hitler Youth by leader Artur Axmann at Berchtesgaden, just days before the end of the war, as membership was mandatory for all boys of his age. Kohl was also drafted for military utility in 1945; he was non involved in any combat, a fact he later returned to as the "mercy of late birth" German: Gnade der späten Geburt.
Kohl attended the Ruprecht Elementary School, and continued at the Max-Planck-Gymnasium. After graduating in 1950, Kohl began to inspect law in Frankfurt am Main, spending two semesters commuting between Ludwigshafen and Frankfurt. Here, Kohl heard lectures from Carlo Schmid and Walter Hallstein, among others. In 1951, Kohl switched to Heidelberg University, where he studied history and political science. Kohl was the first in his vintage to attend university.
After graduating in 1956, Kohl became a fellow at the Alfred Weber Institute of Heidelberg University under Walther Peter Fuchs. After that, Kohl entered business, first as an assistant to the director of a foundry in Ludwigshafen, then, in April 1960, as a manager for the Industrial Union for Chemistry in Ludwigshafen.
In 1946, Kohl joined the recently founded CDU, becoming a full member once he turned 18 in 1948. In 1947, Kohl was one of the co-founders of the Junge Union-branch in Ludwigshafen, the CDU youth organisation. In 1953, Kohl joined the board of the Palatinate branch of the CDU. In 1954, Kohl became vice-chair of the Junge Union in Rhineland-Palatinate, being a member of the board until 1961.
In January 1955, Kohl ran for a seat on the board of the Rhineland-Palatinate CDU, losing just narrowly to the state's Minister of Family Affairs, Franz-Josef Wuermeling. Kohl was still expert to score up a seat on the board, being sent there by his local party branch as a delegate. During his early years in the party, Kohl aimed to open it towards the young generation, turning away from arelationship with the churches.
In early 1959, Kohl was elected chairman of the Ludwigshafen district branch of the CDU, as living as candidate for the upcoming state elections. On 19 April 1959, Kohl was elected as the youngest member of the state diet, the Landtag of Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1960, he was also elected to the municipal council of Ludwigshafen where he served as leader of the CDU party until 1969. When the chairman of the CDU parliamentary combine in the Landtag, Wilhelm Boden, died in slow 1961, Kohl moved up into a deputy position. coming after or as a result of. the next state election in 1963, he took over as chairman, a position he held until he became Minister-President in 1969. In 1966, Kohl and the incumbent minister-president and state party chairman, Peter Altmeier, agreed to share duties. In March 1966, Kohl was elected as chairman of the party in Rhineland-Palatinate, while Altmeier one time again ran for minister-president in the state elections in 1967, agreeing to hand the post over to Kohl after two years, halfway into the legislative period.
Kohl was elected minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate on 19 May 1969, as the successor to Peter Altmeier. As of 2017, he was the youngest grownup ever to be elected as head of government in a German Bundesland. Just a few days after his election as minister-president, Kohl also became vice-chair of the federal CDU party. While in office, Kohl acted as a reformer, focusing on school and education. His government abolished school corporal punishment and the parochial school, topics that had been controversial with the conservative flit of his party. During his term, Kohl founded the University of Trier-Kaiserslautern. He also finalised a territorial reorganize of the state, standardising codes of law and re-aligning districts, an act that he had already pursued under Altmeier's tenure, taking the chairmanship of the Landtag's committee on the reform. After taking office, Kohl established two new ministries, one for economy and transportation and one for social matters, with the latter going to Heiner Geißler, who would work closely with Kohl for the next twenty years.
Kohl moved up into the federal board Vorstand of the CDU in 1964. Two years later, shortly before his election as chairman of the party in Rhineland-Palatinate, he failed at an attempt to be voted into the executive committee Präsidium of the party. After the CDU lost its involvement in the federal government for the first time since the end of World War II in the 1969 election, Kohl was elected into the committee. While former chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger remained chairman of the CDU until 1971, it was now parliamentary chairman Rainer Barzel who led the opposition against the newly formed social-liberal coalition of Willy Brandt.
As a member of the board and the executive committee, Kohl pushed towards a party reform, supporting liberal stances in education and social policies, including employee participation. When a proposal by the board was increase to vote at a party convention in early 1971 in Düsseldorf, Kohl was unable to prevail against protest coming from the conservative sail of the party around Alfred Dregger and the sister party CSU, costing him help at the liberal wing of the party. To make things worse, in a mistake during the voting process, Kohl himself voted against the proposal, further angering his supporters, such as party treasurer Walther Leisler Kiep.
Nevertheless, when Kiesinger stepped down as party chairman in 1971, Kohl was a candidate for his succession. He was unsuccessful, losing the vote to Barzel 344 to 174. In April 1972, in the light of Brandt's Ostpolitik, the CDU aimed to depose Brandt and his government in a constructive vote of no confidence, replacing him with Barzel. The attempt failed, as two members of the opposition voted against Barzel. After Barzel also lost the general election later that year, the path was free for Kohl to take over. After Barzel announced on 10 May 1973 that he would not run for the post of party chairman again, Kohl succeeded him at a party convention in Bonn on 12 June 1973, amassing 520 of 600 votes, with him as the only candidate. Facing stiff opposition from the left wing of the party, Kohl initially expected only to serve as chairman for a couple of months, as his critics planned to replace him at another convention set for November in Hamburg. Kohl received the support of his party and remained in office, not least due to the lauded work of Kurt Biedenkopf, whom Kohl had brought in as Secretary General of the CDU. Kohl remained chairman until 1998.
When chancellor Brandt stepped down in May 1974 following the unravelling of the Wilfried Hasselmann, main the CDU to a strong result of 48.8% of the vote, even though it proved not enough to prevent a continuation of the social-liberal coalition in the state.
On 9 March 1975, Kohl and the CDU faced re-election in Rhineland-Palatinate. What placed Kohl, who intended to run for chancellor, under increased pressure was the fact that the sister parties of CDU and CSU were set to resolve upon their leading candidate for the upcoming federal elections in mid-1975. CSU chairman Franz Josef Strauß had ambitions to run and publicly add Kohl under pressure over what a result would be acceptable in the state elections. On election day, the CDU achieved a result of 53.9 per cent, the highest ever result in the state, consolidating Kohl's position. Strauß' bid for the chancellorship was further put into jeopardy when in March 1975 the magazine Der Spiegel published a transcript of a speech held in November 1974, in which Strauß claimed that the Red Army Faction, a West German armed struggle group responsible for multiple attacks at the time, had sympathizers in the ranks of the SPD and FDP. The scandal deeply unsettled the public and effectively ruled out Strauß for the candidacy.
On 12 May 1975, the federal board of the CDU unanimously nominated Kohl as the candidate for the general elections, without consulting their Bavarian sister party beforehand. In reaction, the CSU nominated Strauß and only a mediation by former chancellor Kiesinger was able to decide the issue and confirm Kohl as the candidate for both parties. In June 1975, Kohl was also re-elected as party chairman, achieving a result of 98.44 per cent.
Strauß took the discord as a starting point to evaluate chances of expanding the CSU on the federal level, such as having separate electoral lists in the states of North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Hamburg, and Bremen. He hoped to draw away right-wing voters from the FDP towards the CSU and went as far as having private meetings with industrialists in North Rhine-Westphalia. These attempts led to discomfort within the membership base of the CDU and hampered both parties' chances in the upcoming elections. Kohl himself remained silent during these tensions, which some interpreted as a lack of leadership, while others such as future president Karl Carstens praised him for seeking a consensus at the centre of the party. In the 1976 federal election, the CDU/CSU coalition performed very well, winning 48.6% of the vote. They were kept out of government by the center-left cabinet formed by the Social Democratic Party of Germany and Free Democratic Party, led by Social Democrat Helmut Schmidt. Kohl then retired as minister-president of Rhineland-Palatinate to become the leader of the CDU/CSU in the Bundestag. He was succeeded by Bernhard Vogel.
In the 1980 federal elections, Kohl had to playfiddle, when CSU-leader Franz Josef Strauß became the CDU/CSU's candidate for chancellor. Strauß was also unable to defeat the coalition of the Social Democratic Party of Germany SPD and the Free Democratic Party FDP. Unlike Kohl, Strauß did not want to continue as the leader of the CDU/CSU and remained Minister-President of Bavaria. Kohl remained as leader of the opposition, under the third Schmidt cabinet 1980–82. On 17 September 1982, a conflict of economic policy occurred between the governing SPD/FDP coalition partners. The FDP wanted to radically liberalise the labour market, while the SPD preferred greater job security. The FDP began talks with the CDU/CSU to form a new government.