Helmut Heinrich Waldemar Schmidt

Mr. Helmut Schmidt was the former West German chancellor who marshaled personal dynamism, managerial brilliance and often acid-tongued impatience to push his country into an assertive international role as the Cold War dragged on into the 1970s. Elected in 1974, Mr. Schmidt rode a difficult period as chancellor: The global economy was in turmoil, and tensions with the Communist east had not slackened. Unlike his more accommodating predecessors, he jousted with the United States over global economics and relations with the Soviet Union. He barely concealed his disdain for President Jimmy Carter, a novice in international affairs, and his wariness of a bellicose President Ronald Reagan. At the same time, he pressed the Federal Republic of Germany to forge closer ties with the Communist regime in East Germany. And working with his close friend President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing of France, he helped soften European distrust of his country for its Nazi past, still fresh in painful memory.