Helmut Schmidt, 1918 – 2015: Germany’s man of balance

Helmut Schmidt, who served as West German Chancellor from 1974 to 1982, has died aged 96. The following review by George Walden of a book about Schmidt by Jonathan Carr was published in The Spectator on 2 February 1985. 

On a visit to the German Chancellery in Bonn, I remember once admiring the collection of paintings installed by Helmut Schmidt in the corridors. But at the back of my mind was still the image of the armoured cars surrounding the squat, fortress-like building as we came in. It was art — and specifically the German Expressionist painting denounced as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis — that evoked Schmidt’s first political stirrings. This seems fitting: Beckmann would have done good justice to the Schmidt jaw: a firm, square line, no weakness or sfumato here. Yet during his career as Chancellor, he presided over every form of ambivalence: a coalition with the Liberals; a divided country — though with plenty of smudgy sfumato across the seam; a smooth-running democracy, its surface punctured by stabs of ferocious terrorism; and an ambiguous alliance with the US.