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| Helmut Kohl and Maike Kohl-Richter |
The wife of Helmut Kohl, the 84-year-old former chancellor of Germany, has become embroiled in a bitter dispute with Angela Merkel’s ruling party about the public rights to Mr Kohl’s political writings.
Maike Kohl-Richter, 50, has been accused of “interfering” in the political legacy of her husband, who ruled Germany from 1982 to 1998 and is seen as the architect of German reunification.
Mr Kohl suffered a bad fall and injuries to his head in February 2008, and as a result cannot speak for more than ten minutes at a time and often slurs his words.
He married Mrs Kohl-Richter, an economist who worked in the chancellery, three months after his fall, and three years after presenting her as his “life partner”.
Since his fall, she has devoted most of her time to looking after the ailing former leader.
However she has been widely criticised in the German media and by Mr Kohl’s own children for allegedly hero-worshipping the former chancellor and being obsessed with protecting him. » | Tony Paterson, Berlin | Sunday, June 29, 2014
