Wolfgang Schäuble died at the age of 81

Wolfgang Schaeuble, the man who imposed harsh economic policies on Greece and drove millions of Greeks into despair, died yesterday (26/12) aged 81 at his home in Germany.

Schäuble was known for his tough economic policies, serving for many years as Germany’s finance minister under Angela Merkel. His name is associated with memoranda that literally razed Greece to the ground.

For Greece and beyond, Mr. Schäuble was “the personification of financial discipline.” According to the German news agency, the minister “passed away peacefully” on 12/26 at 8 pm. According to the Tagesschau publication, citing relatives of the deceased, Schäuble died at home. According to Bild, the ex-minister died in his sleep.

Wolfgang Schäuble was born on September 18, 1942 in Freiburg. He studied law, but soon decided to follow the path of politics. He joined the CDU in 1965. In 1972, he served for the first time in the Bundestag, where he served without interruption until his death.

From 1984 to 1991 he was a minister in the government of Helmut Kohl, first as Federal Minister for Special Affairs and Head of the Chancellery and then as Federal Minister of the Interior.

From 1991 to 2000 he was the leader of the Christian Democratic Union in parliament, and from 1998 to 2000 he was the leader of the Christian Democratic Union party.

From 2005 to 2009, he again served as Minister of the Interior during Merkel’s first term, and then, for eight years, as Federal Minister of Finance during Angela Merkel’s second and third governments. In addition, the politician was the 13th President of the Bundestag from 2017 to 2021.

“No one has been a member of parliament longer than he,” reports German newspaper Die Welt. It is known that in 1990, Schäuble survived an assassination attempt: in the city of Oppenau, a mentally ill drug addict, Dieter Kaufmann, shot a politician with a revolver, two bullets hit the spinal cord and jaw. Schäuble underwent emergency surgery, but he was paralyzed below the third thoracic vertebra and moved in a wheelchair.

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