Auf Wiedersehen
Helmut Schmidt was chancellor of Germany for eight years starting in 1974 and had exited politics entirely by 1986. When I heard last month that he had died at age 96, his name was vaguely familiar but not much came to mind.
Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of post-Nazi West Germany, had guided its ’50s-era economic boom; Willy Brandt introduced Ostpolitik to the world in the 1960s; and Helmut Kohl presided over the creation of the Euro and a reunified Germany in the early 1990s.
Schmidt. His name did not conjure up anything quite that grand.
It came as a surprise, therefore, when I bore witness to a group of my German friends observing a moment of silence in Schmidt’s honor the day he died. They were visibly moved. I was confused and bowed my head. Here was a man, I realized, with whom everyday Germans felt a personal connection. What was going on?
I read several obituaries in German newspapers that week, and I have come to the conclusion that within Schmidt’s popularity lies perhaps a bit of insight into the German soul. Applying one American political litmus test – “Who would you prefer to share a beer with?” – and Schmidt would win hands down. Plans are already afoot to convert his home in Hamburg into a museum – complete with cigarette butts.
Accomplished classical pianist, art critic, economist, newspaper publisher, author and yes, former chancellor of West Germany, Schmidt was also funny, terse and thorough. The Economist magazine wrote last month that Schmidt did not suffer fools; he obliterated them with facts. He was, in other words, the epitome of all things cool, from a German point of view. He also smoked nonstop, rarely photographed without a cigarette in his hand (even in non-smoking areas) – a source of never-ending glee to Germans.
When Schmidt was in office, times were relatively good in Germany – that is, compared to the rest of the world reeling from the mid-’70s global recession. Schmidt was also a founder of the G7 Summit and led West Germany as it came into its own as a global political and economic powerhouse.
So how, you might ask, does Schmidt’s legacy and general appeal to Germans matter to the people of Upstate South Carolina?
To the best of my knowledge, Schmidt never set foot in South Carolina, but he was a champion of international trade with the United States and within Europe. He was a leading proponent of the unified currency – the Euro – in Europe and the political union that has gone along with it. His influence and close friendships with leaders around the world (Henry Kissinger and Gerald Ford were among his closest buddies) fostered further cooperation.
Schmidt’s policies underlined the practicality of Germany standing with giant economic partners such as the United States, and South Carolina stepped up willingly within that context. The Upstate led the nation in German investment by the mid-1970s. Bosch, the biggest auto supplier in the world, had opened its Anderson plant by 1985. And then there was BMW.
The South Carolina Department of Commerce reported this year that German companies accounted for a third of all foreign direct investment in the state during 2014 – to the tune of $1.1 billion.
South Carolina was and remains fertile ground for German investment. Maybe Schmidt is just one man who played a role, albeit a significant one, in the economic development of his nation decades ago. Your German neighbors – managers working at ZF, Adidas, BASF, Rexroth and BMW – love him. Ask them. At the same time, the long hand of Schmidt’s successful economic philosophy has helped shape the South Carolina we know today.
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Anna Mitchell is a former Community Journals writer who now lives and works in Schweinfurt, Germany.
