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Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (born 3 April 1930 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein) is a former German politician of the CDU. He was Minister President of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate from 1969 to 1976 and the sixth Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1982 to 1998. He headed his party from 1973 to 1998, after which he was honorary chairman until 2000. In the 1970s, Kohl was one of the youngest top CDU politicians and was seen as a modernizer of the party, which had first gone into opposition at the federal level in 1969. In 1976 he achieved a very good result as top candidate, but was unable to replace the Schmidt government and went to Bonn as head of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. In the years that followed, he had difficulties in clearly asserting himself against CSU chairman Franz Josef Strauß; In 1980, under pressure from the parliamentary group, Strauss was put forward as a candidate for chancellor, while Kohl would have preferred Ernst Albrecht. While Strauss made his name on the political right, Kohl wanted to appeal to the centre by pursuing a moderate course and to free the FDP from the coalition with the SPD. He succeeded in doing this in 1982, when a new CDU/CSU-FDP coalition elected Kohl as chancellor. Kohl spoke of a spiritual and moral turnaround and stated that he wanted to place greater emphasis on the idea of achievement. In addition to European unification, he saw German reunification as an important goal. Apart from that, Kohl was more pragmatic and followed the political tendencies in his party and the coalition. Kohl played a key role in shaping the process of reunification in 1989/1990 and is therefore considered a father of unity. He remained controversial because of the CDU donations scandal, which cost him the honorary chairmanship of his party in 2000: Kohl had accepted large donations but illegally never disclosed the names of the donors. Kohl, who has become the subject of particular satire, has also received a number of national and international awards.