Helmut Schmidt (1918–2015)

Perhaps it's a reflection of my own age, but I don't think politicians/statesmen like Helmut Schmidt still exist today. In this book he provides considerable insight into his character by describing some of the people who had an influence on his life. He was a great man.

This is an example of humanistic enlightenment, of someone who has lost the chains of religious or idealogical fervour and has observed history since the 1930s till now. German as well European and Global events are put in the correct light, the light of what actually happened, and not what the media or the idealogists on both sides want to make you remember.

Like everybody else in Germany, we wish we would have more politicians and representatives of a state with this integrity and show more intelligence.

A must read book if you want to understand Europe and Germany since the WW2. show less

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and anticipating the reunification of the two Germanies, former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt wrote eight essays about the unification of Germany and the further ramifications for European and international politics. These eight essays, which were originally published in major German newspapers are published here, together with a pamphlet jointly written with Marion Grafin Donhoff.

Most of these essays are now terribly post-factum, and can be read with show more admiration with regard to the then insight of the author as to how Germany and Europe would develop. Politics center on the expected further development of glasnost in the USSR. Remarkably accurate and relevant to world politics today are Schmidt's descriptions of the world economic system.

Published in 1990, this publication is mostly, merely interesting for historians, now. show less

This book contains interviews from 2007 - 2009. The interviewer, Giovanni di Lorenzo, is editor-in-chief of the german weekly newspaper "Die Zeit" (The Time); Helmut Schmidt is co-editor of the same newspaper.

Helmut Schmidt (born in 1918) was the german chancellor from 1974 - 1982. The interviews are not just about politics, they're about personal stuff also.
The remarkable thing about this interviews is the length of them: each as long as Helmut Schmidt needs to smoke a cigarette.

Very show more interesting and funny. Schmidt is still a quite likable and cool guy. show less