Germany · 100th birthday of Helmut Schmidt

Helmut Schmidt was born in Hamburg and was a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). After the Second World War, he studied economics and political science. He became known throughout Germany as Hamburg’s Senator of the Interior during the 1962 North Sea flood. In this role, he coordinated the deployment of the police, relief organizations and Bundeswehr, although the constitutional basis for such a domestic deployment of Bundeswehr was not clearly defined at the time.

In the Federal Government under Willy Brandt, Schmidt successively headed the Federal Ministry of Defence, the Federal Ministry of Economics and the Federal Ministry of Finance. After Brandt’s resignation, he was elected Federal Chancellor in 1974. His social-liberal coalition of the SPD and FDP governed during a period of economic problems resulting from the oil crises, rising unemployment and growing government expenditure.

Domestically, his term in office was shaped in particular by the terrorism of the Red Army Faction (Rote Armee Fraktion). During the so-called German Autumn of 1977, RAF members kidnapped Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the employers’ association. At the same time, the Lufthansa aircraft “Landshut” was hijacked by allied Palestinian terrorists. The Federal Government refused to release imprisoned RAF members; the aircraft’s hostages were freed in Mogadishu by GSG 9.

In foreign policy, Schmidt focused on cooperation with France’s President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. This cooperation provided impetus for the European Monetary System (Europäisches Währungssystem), which was intended to stabilize the exchange rates of European currencies and represented a stage on the way to the later monetary union. Schmidt also supported the NATO Double-Track Decision (NATO-Doppelbeschluss), which linked negotiations with the Soviet Union to the possible deployment of new intermediate-range missiles. This led to conflicts within the SPD and with the peace movement.

In 1982, the coalition broke apart; Helmut Kohl replaced Schmidt through a constructive vote of no confidence. Thereafter, Schmidt served for decades as co-publisher of the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit” and as a political writer. The coin issue thus commemorates not only a milestone anniversary but also a person whose term in office was connected with key issues in the history of West Germany after the war and with European cooperation.