Wolfgang Schäuble is notorious for imposing tough conditions on spendthrift eurozone countries in return for financial aid, and he made constant news during the Greek bailout talks and in the aftermath. He is also a passionate Europhile who has made huge sacrifices in a career spanning more than five decades.
At 72, the German finance minister is despised in Athens, more popular at home than Angela Merkel — and doomed to go down in history as the man who could have been chancellor.
Here’s a look at his career in pictures (above and below):
1972-1984: Early years
Born in 1942 in Freiburg, the son of a former member of parliament from the Christian Democrats (CDU), Wolfgang Schäuble began his career in the party’s youth branch, the Junge Union.
After earning a doctorate in Law and Economics, Schäuble entered the West German Bundestag in 1972. Nine years later, he became parliamentary secretary for the combined CDU and Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc. He kept this post until 1984, when he was appointed minister without portfolio under Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
1989: Rising through ranks
In a 1986 New York Times article, James M. Markham reported a rumor in which Schäuble had advised Kohl not to offer a formal apology following criticism in the Soviet media for comparing Gorbachev’s propaganda skills with those of Joseph Goebbels.
By now a close adviser to Kohl, he was in charge of organizing the first state visit by the leader of the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR), Erich Honecker, in 1987.
He started to be considered a possible heir apparent to Kohl. So it was no surprise when, in April 1989, he was named interior minister, with special responsibility for negotiating the reunification of Germany with Günther Krause, the East German State Secretary. The process ended with a treaty signed in August 1990.
Schäuble as interior minister, June 3, 1988. Photo by Bundesarchiv, B 422 Bild-0035 / (CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)
1990: Assassination attempt
Schäuble was on his way to the top, basking in the political limelight, while Kohl’s popularity was waning. It seemed he was but a step away from becoming chancellor. However, events took a dramatic turn on October 12, 1990 when, during a campaign event in Oppenau, Schäuble was shot and seriously injured by a mentally-unstable man. The assassination attempt left him paralyzed from the waist down and he has been confined to a wheelchair ever since.
German TV breaking the news about the assassination attempt:
Hans-Jochen Vogel, a former leader of the center-left Social Democrat Party, said that the assassination attempt made Schäuble a bitter man. Perhaps — but, in an impressive demonstration of resilience, he was back at work three months later.
Schäuble’s first appearance after the assassination attempt:
In an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel in 2011, Schäuble confessed that he too had questioned whether a man in a wheelchair could lead the country.
1991-1998: A second life
In June 1991, in a clear demonstration of his growing political clout, Schäuble delivered an iconic and decisive speech in favor of moving the capital of unified Germany from Bonn, which had been West German capital, to Berlin in the east.
The emotional speech by Schäuble:
Named chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Schäuble appeared to be getting nearer to his goal — but Kohl had different plans. The chancellor had Schäuble in mind to be his successor, yes — but not until 2002, once European monetary union had been completed. Kohl wanted to secure his legacy as the chancellor who led Germany into the single currency.
Kohl then ran for re-election in 1998 against Social Democrat Gerhard Schröder — and suffered a heavy defeat.
1999: The donations scandal
Schäuble became national leader of the CDU, but his career suffered another setback when a scandal erupted over anonymous political donations to the CDU. It became known as the Schwarzgeldaffäre.
Kohl took his protegé down with him. At first, Schäuble denied any involvement with the lobbyist and arms dealer implicated in the scandal, Karlheinz Schreiber, but he would eventually admit that the party did receive 100,000 Deutsche Marks in 1994. Schäuble’s chances of one day becoming chancellor appeared to have evaporated.
A video from NDR Panorama about the donations scandal:
Mutti’s reign begins
Pressure within the party for a fresh start and fresh faces appeared to leave Schäuble with little option but resignation. This was the moment that Merkel, another Kohl protegé, stepped into the ring. Known as Kohl’s Mädchen, she had risen to the post of secretary general of the CDU thanks partly to his patronage; but, in an article for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that she wrote without advising party chairman Schäuble, Merkel urged the CDU to move on and put the tainted Kohl era behind it. Kohl saw it as betrayal. Within a few short months, Merkel had replaced Schäuble as party leader.
CDU secretary-general Angela Merkel waving after her speech at the federal party convent in Essen, Germany, April 10, 2000. Next to her the resigning then-Chairman of the Conservatives Schäuble. Photo by EPA.
2005: The comeback
After a brief absence from national politics, Schäuble returned to the national stage as interior minister in Merkel’s first cabinet after her national election victory in 2005. Their relationship had been difficult since Merkel vaulted over Schäuble’s head to seize the party leadership; it had deteriorated even further when, in 2004, she failed to back his bid to become German president.
As interior minister, Schäuble was characteristically tough, with controversial proposals that included the preventative detention of terrorism suspects. In 2007, he spoke out in favor of the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention camp as a means to protect society against “the barbarity of terrorism.”
In this documentary, that was made when Schäuble turned 70, he told German media that he did not regret not becoming chancellor at some point in his career:
2009: Surprise promotion
Merkel won re-election in 2009 but this time formed a center-right coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats. Schäuble, aged 67, became the oldest politician in German history to take up a ministerial post, as well as being the longest-serving member of the Bundestag. The unexpected promotion to the all-important finance portfolio was seen at the time as a safe bet for Merkel, who wanted someone experienced and reliable but who was not a threat to her growing supremacy.
In the finance job, however, Schäuble has proved a loyal but independent minister who clearly no longer has to prove himself and speaks his mind — or, as he has put it: “I am independent, loyal and free.”
In this video from his second term as finance minister (after the 2013 general election) he explains more about his plans for the ministry:
2010: Eurozone bailouts begin
Schäuble played a crucial role from the outset in negotiations for bailouts for Greece and other heavily-indebted eurozone member countries. His strict insistence on fiscal rectitude and tough reforms as requirements for assistance quickly earned him the dislike of the southern European “program” recipients: Greek President Karolos Papoulias accused Schäuble of insulting his nation and former Portuguese Prime Minister, José Sócrates, called the German minister “sly.”
While the German parliament debates the second package with rescue measures for Greece, Schäuble plays Sudoko:
Schäuble took his reputation for toughness to another level in November 2010 when he humiliated his spokesman, Michael Offer, live on TV for failing to provide handouts for a news conference on tax revenues. After reprimanding Offer in front of the media, Schäuble wheeled himself off the podium. Needless to say, Offer resigned a few days later. A video of the event got hundreds of thousands of hits on Youtube.
Working at the finance ministry is not always easy, as this video shows:
2014: Zero deficit
Schäuble was named the second most powerful person after Merkel by the Wall Street Journal and consolidated his country’s position as the economic powerhouse of Europe by targeting a zero deficit with no new debt for 2015. He delivered on this the following year, marking the first balanced budget in more than four decades. Known as the schwarze Null (“black zero”), this was seen in Berlin as giving the government the moral authority to preach fiscal austerity to the eurozone; Germany’s trading partners urged it to free up the purse strings to boost domestic demand and lend a hand to recovery elsewhere in Europe.
Wolfgang Schäuble presents ‘the path to budget balancing without new indebtedness.’ Photo by EPA/Wolfgang Kumm.
2015: Temporary Grexit
Germany’s lead role in the negotiations over Greece’s third bailout program saw Schäuble vilified more than ever in protests in Athens because of his tough negotiating stance. This time, even Germany’s closest allies were shocked when the finance minister proposed, before a marathon eurozone summit in July, that Greece should take “timeout” from the currency union. The incident led to heightened speculation in the German media of a growing rift between Schäuble and Merkel, but the 72-year-old minister appeared totally unrepentant and denied any talk that Berlin was trying to dominate the eurozone.
“There is no German dominance. Germany is in a good position economically, that is undeniable,” he told Der Spiegel.