Politics & Parenthood

Walter Kohl, son of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, has published a tell-all book describing in moving detail his lonely childhood and the rift with his father. Walter’s book contains remarkable and moving passages that strip away the sentimental image that Kohl once cultivated about his family. “For my father, politics was, and is, his true home,” Walter Kohl writes. “He considered himself, in an archaic sense, the head of a tribe called the CDU. Somewhere along the way, in his internal perception, he and the party fused into one.” His book portrays a man who was almost always absent. His story is admittedly not unique.