No praise for the Chancellor’s wife
Kohl’s advisor Teltschik deals against the Chancellor’s companions
September 29, 2024, 3:32 p.m
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Horst Teltschik has been part of Helmut Kohl’s inner circle for almost 20 years. He now describes to a historian his view of the Chancellor, his marriages to Hannelore and Maike and of many Union grandees. He often brushes off the gentlemen in particular. On one point the Chancellor himself comes off badly.
Horst Teltschik, once Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s most important foreign policy advisor, has unpleasant memories of many of his colleagues, as can be seen in a forthcoming book by the Hildesheim historian Michael Gehler, the “Spiegel” reports in advance.
Teltschik says of Manfred Wörner, Defense Minister until 1988 and then NATO Secretary General: “A playboy type who sees himself as great.” Teltschik is also critical of Wörner’s later successor as minister, Volker Rühe: Rühe is a “prepotent guy” with a “healthy arrogance.” And Kohl’s long-term CDU rival Lothar Späth, Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg until 1991, describes Teltschik with the words: “Small in stature and politically weak. It was known that he had a career ladder in the kitchen. The top rung was not yet labeled .”
Teltschik was in Kohl’s inner circle from 1972 to 1990; from 1982 he headed the foreign policy department in the Chancellery. According to historian Gehler, Teltschik also reports on Kohl’s private life. According to Teltschik, things were not going well in the Chancellor’s marriage, and his sympathy went to his wife Hannelore, who later became seriously ill and took her own life in 2001. When Teltschik observed how lovingly Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev treated his wife Raissa, the thought popped into his head: “Kohl could learn a lesson from that.”
Kohl’s second wife Maike Kohl-Richter, on the other hand, doesn’t get along well with Teltschik. She seems to have been disturbed during his conversations with Kohl about their shared past: “She always interfered, even though she was never present at the events.”
In one case there is already prominent opposition to Teltschik’s memories. According to Teltschik, he and Kohl were disappointed in the then finance minister and CSU leader Theo Waigel: “We weren’t always so sure about what he could or couldn’t really do… In contrast to his own self-confidence, he wasn’t the strongest minister.” A source for this assessment is said to have been Waigel’s State Secretary Horst Köhler, who later became Federal President. Köhler denies this to “Spiegel”.
