Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl passes away

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has ordered flags at EU institutions to be flown at half-mast.

London, June 16: Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who presided over reunification of his country divided after the Second World War, died on Friday, the BBC said. He was 87.

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has ordered flags at EU institutions to be flown at half-mast.

The colossally-built Kohl, of the Christian Democratic Union, was Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (or West Germany) from 1982 to 1990, and then of reunited Germany till 1998 after the German Democratic Republic merged with it after fall of its communist government.

A Roman Catholic, Kohl joined the CDU in his teens shortly after its postwar founding. He earned his doctorate in 1958 at the University of Heidelberg with a dissertation on the politics of Rhineland-Palatinate and became governor of that western state in 1969.

He won elections in 1983 and 1987, then rode to an election triumph in 1990 on a wave of post-unity euphoria.

IANS