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| Helmut Schmidt gestures during a speech he made at his birthday party in Hamburg in January 2014. |
Helmut Schmidt, an elder statesman of German politics who led West Germany as it rose to become a global economic powerhouse, has died aged 96.
Schmidt’s doctor, Heiner Greten, told the German news agency dpa he died on Tuesday afternoon in Hamburg. He had been receiving treatment at home after his health deteriorated earlier this week.
The grandson of a docker became chancellor of West Germany in 1974 after the resignation of fellow Social Democrat Willy Brandt, triggered when a top aide to Brandt was unmasked as an East German agent. Schmidt served until 1982, when he lost power to conservative Helmut Kohl.
A centrist, Schmidt steered the country through a wave of homegrown terrorism, preached free-market economics to his party and embodied pragmatic politics in a Europe divided by the iron curtain. » | Staff and agencies in Berlin | Tuesday, November 10, 2015
THE GUARDIAN: Helmut Schmidt: 'Britain's empire has gone, though you think it still exists': Germany's former chancellor believes a lack of leadership has added to the crisis at the European institutions he helped forge » | Larry Elliott, Economics editor | Sunday, December 22, 2013
