He loved to compare himself to Sisyphus, the hero eternally doomed to push the boulder up, only to see it roll down and find him at the foot of the mountain. But he was the Sisyphus that Albert Camus reread, convinced that his efforts were useless but absolutely necessary, and therefore ultimately “happy” with this endless endeavor.
That was Wolfgang Schäuble, the man who, perhaps more than anyone after Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel, had a positive influence, for better or for worse, on the last 40 years of German and European history. A stalwart giant of politics, Schäuble played the most delicate roles and held the most important positions in Germany, but the two highest goals, the chancellorship and the presidency of the republic, were denied to him by the very two people to whom he ultimately committed himself his life in which he literally devoted himself to sacrifice.
Great worker
He was actually Kohl's designated dolphin after being the real architect of reunification. It was Schäuble who, as Interior Minister of the Federal Republic of Germany, negotiated (or should I say) the terms of the merger with the GDR, working 18 hour days to finalize every detail, from privatizations to refunds, as his mentor flew on the wings of history.
He paid a very high price: On October 3, 1990, a deranged man shot him three times, leaving him paralyzed from the legs down and confined to a wheelchair forever. A month later he was already working in the ministry. But in 1998 Kohl, who had cried at his sickbed, refused to succeed him, ran for the fifth time and handed over the chancellorship to Gerhard Schröder.
But he didn't want to be a brute: When the black money scandal brought down the reunification chancellor a year later, Schäuble first decided to lie about the illegal donations to the CDU, which he had accepted at the request of Kohl, who tried to accuse him of some responsibility. He had to resign as party leader and left the leadership to Angela Merkel. From then on he never spoke to his mentor again.
When he returned to government in 2005, first at the head of the Interior Ministry and then from 2009 at the head of the Finance Ministry, Wolfgang Schäuble chose the role that would embed him in the history of those years: the dark face of Germany, the dark side of power German, the most inflexible interpreter of austerity and respect for the rules of the Eurozone, theorist of a group of convergent economies in which there was no place for the loose habits of the countries of Southern Europe.
Of course, Schäuble always had a pro-European heart. For someone who was born in Freiburg, learned French as a boy and grew up surrounded by the myth of Paris, it couldn't be otherwise. One evening at dinner in Berlin I sat next to him and asked him what the difference was between him and Chancellor Merkel when it came to Europe: “She doesn't experience it emotionally, for Merkel Europe is just a rational project.” And then she has one Game theory approach to politics: She likes negotiations for the sake of negotiations. That’s why he often wins, but his steps are always small.”
However, Schäuble's Europe has always been Carolingian, highly networked and integrated into a hard core. The plan for Greece to leave the eurozone in 2015 bore his signature: “Only temporarily, so that it can sort things out and grow again,” he told me a few years ago in one of his last interviews. However, he had to forgo resistance from Mario Draghi, who was convinced that it was not the ECB's job to give Athens an ultimatum. The polemical exchange between the two of them on the night of July 11, 2015 is famous, when Schäuble asked him how long he planned to continue financing the Greek banks and keeping them afloat: “I would also like to know more about your politics, but I” “I don't ask you and I expect the same confidentiality,” Draghi replied. And then he made his suggestion: “If you want to throw Greece out of the euro, do it yourself, but don't try to use the European Central Bank.” In the end, Schäuble obeyed Angela Merkel's no. However, the Chancellor has never rewarded her loyalty: like in 2010, when Schäuble wanted to become President of the Republic, but Merkel blocked his path by favoring Christian Wulff, one of his internal opponents.
The two decisions
Schäuble will remain bound by two decisions that are the basis for the delay in German public investments and are now causing enormous difficulties for the state system and the Scholz government. The first was the debt brake, the budget brake introduced into the constitution in 2009 that limits the annual budget deficit to 0.35%, except in exceptional cases such as wars and pandemics. The other is the black zero, the balanced budget, the soul place of the legendary German thrift.
Ironic and brilliant, despite his condition, Schäuble had an incredible connection to life. He cultivated his passions such as opera and football. At a performance at the State Opera he could often be found in a wheelchair: “My advantage is that I don't take anyone's seat away, so I have no problem asking for a free ticket. But I pay for my wife's,” he joked . And when it comes to football, one evening he even managed to take Angela Merkel to a bar to watch a Champions League game between FC Bayern Munich.