THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: Helmut Schmidt, Germany's 89-year-old former chancellor and its most renowned and inveterate nicotine addict, became the first prominent victim of his country's new anti-smoking laws yesterday and faced the prospect of court action for lighting up in public.
Mr Schmidt and Loki, his 88-year-old wife, are well known in Germany for theirchain-smoking. The ex-chancellor even has a weekly interview column in the respected Die Zeit magazine entitled "A Cigarette with Helmut Schmidt".
The couple attended a new year reception at a theatre in their home town of Hamburg only days after Germany's ban on public smoking was introduced on 1 January. As guests of honour, the Schmidts were provided with ashtrays as soon as they sat down.
Photographs of Mr and Mrs Schmidt drawing heavily on cigarettes and clearly enjoying their smoke at the theatre were plastered across the mass-circulation Bild newspaper the next day. In Germany, such a flagrant breach of the law was bound to have consequences.
Yesterday they arrived in the form of a declaration by Hamburg state prosecutors that they were investigating the Schmidts on suspicion of causing "bodily harm" to other guests at the theatre and of being in breach of the city state's ban on smoking in public places.
The case against the Schmidts was brought by the anti-smoking lobby group, Non Smoker's Initiative. Roland Keiser, the group's spokesman, said: "Their illegal behaviour was encouraged by the theatre which provided them with ashtrays despite the ban on smoking."
Helmut Schmidt's office declined to comment. The former Social Democrat chancellor is one of Germany's elder statesmen. He invariably lights up when interviewed on television. Schmidt faces charges for defying smoking ban >>> By Tony Paterson in Berlin
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