Wolfgang Schäuble, who has died aged 81, was a giant of German public life, epitomising the successes, anxieties and obduracy of his postwar country. The longest-serving parliamentarian in German history, Schäuble played a pivotal role in two crucial events of the past four decades – the process that led to reunification in 1990 and the austerity measures imposed across much of Europe following the global financial crash of 2008.
To the German public, he will probably be best known as the politician who was shot while campaigning, by a man suffering from mental illness, and paralysed from the waist down, only to return to frontline politics within months. Seven years later, in 1997, Schäuble was asked by an interviewer from Stern magazine how his use of a wheelchair might affect his chances of fulfilling his ultimate ambition. “A cripple as chancellor?” he replied. “You have every right to ask that question.” Bluntness and a lack of self-pity became his leitmotifs.
