Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, wife Maike Kohl-Richter (2011)
Photo: RALPH ORLOWSKI / REUTERS
In the legal dispute over a book about the deceased former chancellor Helmut Kohl, his widow Maike Kohl-Richter hardly has a chance of success.
After the trial before the Federal Court of Justice (BGH), it is hardly to be expected that she will receive the millions in compensation that her husband fought for shortly before death or that she would be awarded even more money.
Such a claim is basically not hereditary, said the presiding judge Stephan Seiters in a preliminary assessment.
So far, he sees no reasons for an exception.
The BGH wants to announce a judgment at the end of November.
The background is the bestseller "Legacy: The Kohl Protocols" from 2014. Kohl's ghostwriter and former confidante Heribert Schwan was supposed to write the memoirs of the former CDU boss.
In 2001 and 2002 he met the former chancellor in his house in Ludwigshafen for more than a hundred days.
Kohl said Schwan recorded about 630 hours of conversation.
After three of four planned volumes, however, the two fell out.
Schwan published the book anyway.
In it he quotes Kohl with derogatory judgments about politicians such as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD) and ex-CDU General Secretary Heiner Geißler. Kohl had partly used a "slang" and "drastic" choice of words, formulated Judge Seiters. 116 passages are so controversial that the BGH is also negotiating their distribution. This includes, among other things, incorrect quotations and formulations that could be taken out of context.
Former Chancellor Kohl demanded at least five million euros plus interest from Schwan, co-author Tilman Jens and the co-defendant publisher. The Cologne Regional Court awarded him one million euros in 2017 for violating general personal rights. After the 87-year-old died, the higher regional court (OLG) Cologne ruled that the claim to this monetary compensation was not hereditary. Widow Kohl-Richter is taking action against this before the BGH and is making the same claim as her husband.
As for the monetary compensation, argued Kohl-Richter's lawyer, the debtors were in default after the Cologne judgment.
He spoke of "age discrimination" when people could not rely on age that their heirs would get paid money.
The other side called this a "legal somersault mortale".
Judge Seiters had said that the money was about satisfaction that the dead could not get.
Latest volte in years of legal dispute
In response, Schwan spoke of a "ray of hope in my unsavory argument with the Kohl heiress."
He described Kohl-Richter as greedy for money;
she will probably "finally go away financially empty and have to reimburse considerable legal costs," he wrote to the dpa news agency.
It is not the first time that the BGH has dealt with the issue.
A good year ago Kohl-Richter achieved a partial success against Schwan: He has to give her information about what still exists on tape or typed out of the conversations with the former chancellor.
However, the Kohl page can no longer access documents from the Chancellery that Schwan may have in his possession.
Schwan lodged a constitutional complaint against the judgment, as his lawyer announced.
That has not yet been decided.
Nevertheless, Kohl-Richter had already requested information that Schwan also gave.
svs / dpa
