Helmut Kohl: Colossus with a human touch

• Doctorate in political science
• 'Prince of the realm'
• From bumbler to skilled diplomat
• 'Thrashings, humiliation, scorn and ridicule'

(CNN) -- In November 1976, not long after Helmut Michael Kohl failed in his attempt to unseat Helmut Schmidt as chancellor of Germany, one of Kohl's so-called allies announced that Kohl was unfit to lead his country.

Kohl, said Franz Josef Strauss of the Christian Social Union, was "utterly incapable." He lacked "the character, the brain and the political prerequisites" required to be chancellor.

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It was, then, with no small degree of satisfaction that Kohl campaigned this year for his fifth four-year term as chancellor of Germany. Not only was he the country's longest-serving chancellor since 1945, he was also the longest-serving leader in the West.

His failure to be re-elected -- he lost on September 27 to Gerhard Schroeder -- symbolizes the end of an era in German politics.

Kohl was often referred to as the "colossus," a reference that applied not merely to his formidable size -- Kohl is 6 feet 4 inches tall, and his weight has been reported anywhere between 280 and nearly 400 pounds.

During Kohl's tenure, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand rose, shone and exited from the world stage. Kohl, meanwhile, parlayed his homey personal style and deft political touch into a 16-year run on that very same stage, not merely enduring but growing in stature and international esteem.

Doctorate in political science

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Kohl was born into a conservative, Roman Catholic family in Ludwigshafen on the Rhine, an industrialized port city in what is now the state of Rhineland-Palatinate.

The city is, as The Economist put it two years ago, "about the most averagely German place imaginable." The magazine also noted that "Germans do not much go in for intellectual leaders, and Mr. Kohl makes no pretense to be one."

Indeed, Kohl completed his secondary schooling only after being drafted late in World War II -- he saw no action, and had to walk home when the war was over -- and working for a time on a farm. He studied at the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Heidelberg, earning a doctorate in political science at the latter.

Kohl worked briefly as an assistant to the owner of an iron foundry before taking a job with an industrial association, a post he held between 1959 and 1969.

It was during that period that he became active in the youth wing of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Ludwigshafen and learned there was more to politics than youthful idealism. While Kohl was putting up posters for the CDU once, a trade unionist whose sympathies evidently lay elsewhere dumped a pot of glue on Kohl's head.

'Prince of the realm'

Kohl was elected to the Ludwigshafen city council and later, at age 29, became the youngest member of the state legislature before becoming premier, or governor, of Rhineland-Palatinate.

In a profile of Kohl, the Christ und Welt newspaper applauded his "aggressiveness, intelligence, sparkling humor, temperament and lively imagination." His skills as an administrator and leader caused the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper to pronounce him a "prince of the realm."

So narrow was his loss to Schmidt and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in 1976 that Kohl declared himself the "moral victor," and for days afterward sought desperately to pull apart the coalition that returned Schmidt to office.

Schmidt was re-elected again in 1980, but he was forced out in 1982 when the Free Democratic Party abandoned his coalition and threw its support to Kohl and the CDU.

From bumbler to skilled diplomat

Kohl proved to be something of a bumbler in his early years as chancellor. He stunned Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev by likening him to Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister, and befuddled Ronald Reagan by taking him to visit a cemetery where German SS troops were buried.

And yet while three U.S. presidents, five Soviet or Russian leaders and nine Japanese prime ministers have passed through history's turnstile, Kohl has abided.

Although Germany's economic success took place on Kohl's watch, the highlight of his tenure was the rapid unification of Germany after the Soviet Union relinquished control of Eastern Europe in 1989-1990. Kohl campaigned tirelessly for unification while reassuring the NATO powers and Russia that a unified Germany posed no threat.

His leadership was questioned in recent years, however. Unemployment in the former East Germany is high, and the western half of the country has chafed under high and disproportionate taxes that were imposed to prop up the welfare system into which the former East Germans were enfolded.

There was also criticism that with his dictatorial hold on the CDU, Kohl killed off dissent and squeezed the vitality out of a party accused of running out of energy and ideas.

'Thrashings, humiliation, scorn and ridicule'

Kohl has grown used to the criticism, but it has also made him wary.

"I do have a sense of satisfaction," he says in remarks on his Web site, "because by the time you become chancellor -- at least here in Germany -- you have had to take a lot of thrashings, humiliation, scorn and ridicule. You could say I'm a perfect example of this."

Kohl trailed in the polls all this year, but he and his supporters noted he had been in this predicament before and had always come back. This time, however, he did not.

No matter how bitter his defeat may be, Kohl can take satisfaction in knowing that it was he who engineered the reunification of his country, and who oversaw its rise to economic dominance in Europe.

He can also reflect that he put Strauss' criticism to rest for all time. If anyone has demonstrated "the character, the brain and the political prerequisites" to be chancellor, it was Helmut Kohl.