For a number of years....whenever a German former Chancellor passed on....his 'papers' were passed onto the national Bundesarchiv. These were professional archivists labeled everything, and made accessible to the general public or researchers. If you went up and asked about papers written by Schmidt or Brandt.....there were papers to be found.
So in the last couple of months....the Bundesarchiv has had to deal with the death of Helmet Kohl. They sent a request to the widow back three months ago. Oddly, no response.
If you follow the news media for the past decade, there's been this relationship problem existing on several different fronts.
Helmet Kohl felt the way that he was eased out....by the CDU Party apparatus....was not a friendly matter. The fact that Kohl had been caught in a scandal situation....didn't matter in Kohl's opinion.
Kohl and the news media? A handful of journalists were allowed access...mostly as long as they wrote friendly pieces on the Kohl period.
The new wife? Well....Maike Kohl-Richter didn't exactly thrill family members, and she considered her primary function in protecting the Kohl legend. Right now today, it's safe to say no relationship exists between the widow and the children of Helmet Kohl (via his first wife).
Kohl-Richter holds control over Kohl's documents. In three months....she has yet to respond to the request for the papers.
I sat and read through the SWR news piece and they threw out this one single prospective....that the Federal Archives thinks that there really aren't that many Kohl official documents existing. As far as people discuss the matter....there's never been an inventory....or a suggestion of some massive collection of documents.
Added to all this hype....is the commentary from Kohl's son....who wants a Kohl foundation to exist and such documents would neatly fit into it. Chance of this happening? Zero percent, I think.
It's an odd game being played out. The widow probably wants the legend status to be preserved and every single document is going to be read five times over.....and singular decisions will be made to release or prevent release. Even if ten-thousand documents were released....no one can say with any authority that it'll be some great moment with a vastly different prospective of the Kohl period.
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