Bundestag resolves the Helmut Kohl Foundation

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Maike Kohl-Richter: "The project contradicts my husband's last will"

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Andreas Arnold / dpa

In future, a Helmut Kohl Foundation will commemorate the life and work of the long-serving German Chancellor.

The Bundestag decided on Thursday evening against the express will of Kohl's widow Maike Kohl-Richter.

One of the tasks of the foundation, the establishment of which the Bundestag approved without dissenting votes, includes the establishment of a publicly accessible memorial in Berlin.

However, Kohl-Richter had previously stated: "The project contradicts my husband's last will." According to her lawyers, there are doubts as to whether Kohl's life and politics could actually be "objectively" processed in the proposed model.

On Thursday, shortly before the vote, she said on her website that she had not agreed to the project.

Nonetheless, all parliamentary groups in the Bundestag, from the Union to the left, voted for the foundation;

only the AfD abstained.

The CDU politician, who died four years ago, held the office of Federal Chancellor from 1982 to 1998 and is considered the "Chancellor of Unity".

That is why the Foundation should honor Kohl's political work for the »freedom and unity of the German people« as well as his commitment to European integration.

But Kohl also stands for the CDU donation affair that was uncovered in 1999.

So far there are six comparable foundations in Germany such as the Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt Foundation and the Federal Chancellor Adenauer House Foundation.

ngo / dpa / afp