Wolfgang Schäuble, former German Finance Minister and political figure across the Rhine, has died at 81

He worked on the negotiation and signing of the treaty to reunify the two Germanys in 1990, but was best known afterwards as Minister of Finance, where he embodied Berlin’s budgetary rigor in the wake of the financial crisis in the euro zone, from 2008.

He was one of the architects of the reunification of Germany in 1990. The former German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, died at the age of 81, the German press reported on Wednesday, December 27. “Wolfgang Schäuble shaped our country for more than half a century: as a member of parliament, minister and president of the Bundestag. With him, Germany loses a sharp thinker, a passionate politician and a pugnacious democrat”greeted German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a message on X (formerly Twitter).

Paraplegic since an attack in 1990, he was one of the most notable figures in German political life of the last 30 years, ending his long career as president of the Chamber of Deputies between 2017. In 2008, he distinguished himself as a figure of budgetary austerity during the European financial crisis linked to that of subprimes.

“One of the most influential European leaders of his generation”

“He was a friend, a loyal and reliable partner, a tireless architect of Franco-German friendship,” underlined the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, who said he “deeply saddened”on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

Still on X, the President of the ECB, Christine Lagarde, welcomed “one of the most influential European leaders of his generation.” In 2011, he supported the candidacy of his then counterpart at the Ministry of the Economy as the EU candidate to head the IMF, saying that she was “respected and appreciated throughout the world of finance”.