Kohl lover Beatrice Herbolt: "He was drained, a broken man"

Beatrice Herbold, 61, says that she met Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1990 and that from the mid-1990s until 2000 he was his lover.

In 2016, she revealed her relationship for the first time in an interview with Bunte magazine, and now she has written a book about her relationship with Kohl *. Herbold ran a modeling agency in the Rhine-Main area until 2000, today she lives as a real estate manager in Berlin.

Both would have tried to keep the love relationship secret, says the author. She was known only a few close confidants who do not comment publicly.

SPIEGEL: Ms. Herbold, why do not you post your memories of Helmut Kohl until after his death? Did you wait until he can not fight back?

Beatrice Herbold: No, you have to know the whole story: I have been silent for almost 20 years about our relationship. But in 2016, a journalist came to me and confronted me with the fact that he knew about my relationship with Helmut Kohl. So it happened that I got involved in the interview with "Bunte". At that time Helmut Kohl was still alive. Only then did the idea of ​​writing everything down in me matured. But it took time. I really would have liked Helmut to have read my book in order to give his vote as well. It is important to me to portray Helmut Kohl differently. There are hardly any books that show him from the private side.

SPIEGEL: After all, you did not write the book alone.

Herbold: I had written 134 pages and then came to a point where it did not go on because it touched my deepest feelings. After all, I had not even talked about it for nearly 20 years. Since I needed someone, and because I already knew the journalist Katrin Sachse and we got along well, I asked her.

Price query time:
30.08.2019, 15:27 clock
No guarantee

DISPLAY

Beatrice Herbold, Katrin Sachse
My beloved girlfriend: My secret years with Helmut Kohl

Publishing company:

Europe publishing house

Pages:

192

Price:

EUR 18,00

Buy from Amazon Buy from Thalia

Product information is purely editorial and independent. The so-called affiliate links above, we usually receive a commission from the dealer when buying. More information here.

SPIEGEL: Now talk about your memories, of all things, with journalists from a magazine that Kohl just called "pig's leaf." He would not like that.

Herbold: Of course, he still knew exactly what was written in your magazine. He used to say that he does not read the "mirror", but has let him read aloud, including mine. That's why I'm giving you an interview so that your readers get to know the private Helmut Kohl.

SPIEGEL: For the sake of cabbage, you have abandoned your desire to start a family. What fascinated you about him?

Herbold: That was just love. From the first moment, when we met in the sauna. It was at the hotel in Bad Hofgastein, where Helmut Kohl was always fasting. He let everyone in the sauna pull together so I could sit down. But we did not look in the eyes until the next day when we met in the lobby. That was really magical, he had such warm eyes, so teddy bear eyes. There was immediately this chemistry, a soulmate. He told me later that he felt the same way.

Private

Kohl, Herbold (far right) on vacation

SPIEGEL: To be honest, it sounds like a novel about the Bergdoktor. Your book slips into kitsch, for example, when you write about the "lucky showers" that you have taken.

Herbold: Pure luck may feel bystanders as kitsch. I can only play it the way I experienced it. You must understand how happy I was with him during this time.

SPIEGEL: As a proof of your long-term love relationship with the Chancellor of the Federal Republic, you are only going to introduce a joint photo. It now also graces the title of your book. Do you have diary entries, pictures, calendars that support your descriptions?

Herbold: When moving from Frankfurt to Berlin, the most important box of my life has been lost, with all photos and personal documents. But apart from this one picture, there is no one that shows me alone with Kohl. I have also thrown it in public. It was important to me that the relationship was not known. In 2016 I made an affidavit to the "Bunten" about the veracity of my descriptions. And after this first interview, neither Kohl nor his family denied anything.

SPIEGEL: You cite whole dialogues with cabbage literally, and describe in detail which clothes he wore when. How can you remember it exactly without any recordings?

Herbold: When he left, that's the lot of a lover, I'm left alone. Then I sat down and let it all review: That's what he did, he brought me that, I cooked that, we discussed that. When I started the book, at first only the dialogues flowed out of me. I still had them all in my head. I could look up the data in my then office calendars. Since I have always registered his visits - with his initials.

SPIEGEL: Your book reveals a contradictory image of women by the old chancellor. On the one hand, he understood earlier than his CDU colleagues that women have to do much more for the same success than men. On the other hand, Kohl blasphemes about badly dressed women and lances with double names.

Herbold: He promoted talented women, but also liked being women. He always said: You have an advantage, you can shine much more than men. He always gave me the feeling that I can do something and can also make a difference. He really supported me there.

SPIEGEL: At the same time, he betrayed his wife with you.

Heinrich Sanden / DPA

The then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his wife Hannelore on 6 March 1983 in the CDU headquarters in Bonn. The coalition of CDU / CSU and FDP had reached 55.8 percent of the vote in the Bundestag election

Herbold: He always spoke very lovingly about his wife, but both had an agreement. He always told me: do not worry, everything is settled. She also has someone. I also knew that both had separate bedrooms.

SPIEGEL: You also write about the chancellor's biggest drama, the CDU donation scandal. How did you hear about it?

Herbold: When he said in a television interview at Easter 1997 that he would be back in the 1998 general election, I was speechless, because until then he had always told me the opposite. He even made plans for us to travel to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, for example. But he had repeatedly suggested that a plot against him was going on without telling me what it was all about. And suddenly he also changed his mind that Wolfgang Schäuble should be his successor.

SPIEGEL: How did he explain that to you?

Herbold: When I asked him, he was really grumpy and did not want to talk about it first. I drilled and then suddenly said, "I can not let Schaeuble succeed." Something had happened. It was about the arms dealer Karlheinz Schreiber, who gave Schaeuble money.

SPIEGEL: Kohl has admitted that he himself has accepted a multiple of this sum, up to two million marks. How can he say about Schäuble that he can not become his successor?

Herbold: You need to know the following story: When his brother Walter Kohl went to war, Helmut took him to the tram. The brother turned around at the landing of the train and said to Helmut: "Take care, I will not come back and especially take care of Mama." Helmut could not say anything anymore, the doors were closing, but he felt fear at that moment. His brother fell in the war. From that experience, his whole ambition was to avoid war, and that included arms deliveries. That was Helmut Kohl's sentimental reason. The facts he told me confidentially back then are another.

SPIEGEL: Before the donation scandal became known, Kohl lost the Bundestag election in 1998.

Herbold: Even the election defeat was a heavy blow, but during the donation scandal I did not recognize him. He was drained, a broken man. He sat hunched at my desk, shoulders hunched forward. I said to him on the head: From the number with the donors you can not get out.

SPIEGEL: Did you ask him where the donations came from?

Herbold: I gave him three names, whom I took to be the donors. And I was about to call a fourth when suddenly the old silver cutlery from my grandmother fell on the porcelain plate. Helmut looked at me speechless and it stood on his forehead: If she already combines these names, then the journalists will do the same.

DPA

Helmut Kohl alongside Wolfgang Schäuble, on February 3, 1998, before the start of the parliamentary group meeting in Bonn's Bundeshaus. Schäuble pulls his head away with the words: "Such pictures hang for years"

SPIEGEL: Today it is more likely that there were no anonymous donors, but that the black coffers came from the days of the Flick affair.

Herbold: I do not believe in that. I can not tell you if my three names were the right ones, but I saw Kohl's reaction and she was really scared.

SPIEGEL: Did Kohl talk to you about how his party dealt with the donation scandal?

Herbold: He was very disappointed and hurt by how Wolfgang Schäuble and Angela Merkel behaved - he had expected otherwise. Especially for Merkel, he simply had only deep disappointment left, because she has so focused on him.

SPIEGEL: The donation scandal plunged the CDU into a deep crisis, Kohl's successor had to sweep up the pieces. What else did he expect?

Herbold: He expected more decency, especially from Angela Merkel, whom he had promoted and made Minister of the Environment. And in the end, she dropped her mentor. I consoled Helmut: Look, it's like Bismarck. He did a lot for Germany and just had to leave.

Michael Jung / DPA

The then Minister of Women Angela Merkel during the party congress of the CDU on 16 December 1991 in the Palace of Culture in Dresden next to Kohl

SPIEGEL: If we're already on donations, you supposedly got a donation from him.

Herbold: He helped me pay for my very expensive divorce. The lawyers, one of whom Kohl recommended to me, sent me bills of almost 30,000 marks. I was very battered and really depressed at this stage. Then one day he pushed me an envelope with 50,000 marks. I did not want to accept the money first, but he insisted. He said he wanted me to be fine.

SPIEGEL: Did the 50,000 mark also come from party donations?

Herbold: No, it definitely came from him privately.

SPIEGEL: Kohl has also given you a state gift from French President Jacques Chirac.

Herbold: Yes, an expensive crystal apple. He knew that I like Kristall and wanted to give me pleasure by giving me his gift from the French President.

SPIEGEL: Was Helmut Kohl able to admit mistakes?

Herbold: Do you remember this scene in Halle, where he was pelted with eggs? Helmut was so angry and started on the launcher. Later, I said to him, "You have to understand the people. You tell them about blooming landscapes, and we know that it will take decades for the East to align itself with the West. The word flowering he should have avoided then, I think.

SPIEGEL: Did he also see that as a mistake?

Peter Kneffel / DPA

The Eierwurf of Halle: After Kohl was pelted on 10 May 1991 in front of the town hall in Halle by a demonstrator with eggs, he tries to make a way through the crowd in rage in order to locate the culprit

Herbold: He certainly saw that as a mistake too. But he wanted to give hope to people and not say: Please be prepared, please, that you all feel bad.

SPIEGEL: Kohl liked to talk harshly about colleagues from one's own or some other party and never mince words. How do you explain that?

Herbold: I had a strong feeling that he was suspicious and did not trust people unconditionally. And so arose a great loneliness. On the one hand he stood in the light and when it was then turned off, he was alone.

SPIEGEL: How would Kohl assess the situation of the CDU today?

Herbold: I can not tell you that. But I still remember that I told him then: I think the combination of black and green is really interesting.

SPIEGEL: What did he say about that?

Herbold: He said, girls, we are not that far yet.

* Beatrice Herbold and Katrin Sachse: "Beloved friend, my secret years with Helmut Kohl." Europe publishing house; 192 pages, 18, - Euro.