85-year-old Henry Kissinger explained in his own style what he would wish Helmut Schmidt on his birthday: "I hope he outlives me. Because I don't want to be in a world without Schmidt."
how does Helmut Schmidt himself look back on his years as chancellor? Over two long interviews he talked to the authors Ruprecht Eser and Gunter Hofmann as they compiled a political portrait of the statesman. In this documentary (produced by the Berlin firm Ziegler Film, producer Ziegler) his political contemporaries and opponents or interviewed, as well as read himself. They describe the Chancellor and the individual Helmut Schmidt from their own perspective today.
Schmidt gives his views about the end of these Socialist-Liberal coalition in 1982. Even today the former Chancellor describes his relationship with the then Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who was instrumental in transforming the government into a CDU-FDP coalition, as "polite and cool". Genscher himself describesthe Hanseatic Schmidt as a man "who in the hour of danger and threat is the one who can confront a problem with caution but also with ruthless clarity and devastating accountability." Qualities of Schmidt's which were particularly visible in a crisis year 1977 and in the struggle against the Red Army Faction terrorists, during the hostage drama in the Lufthansa plane “Landshut”, and by the abduction and murder of leading businessman Hanns-Martin Schleyer. Schmidt’s contemporary over many years, the former President of France Giscard d´Estaing, describes his friend in these words: "He is not a man of evasion. He says what he thinks, and he is very loyal. If he promises something to you, he will keep his promise."
Perhaps this offers some explanation for Schmidt's continuing popularity and the respect shown to him by younger people in particular -- and perhaps explains why, for more and more people, he is still "the German chancellor" no matter how old he gets.
This portrait depicts the crucial political moments of his years as Chancellor: the energy crisis and the international economic problem, terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons. Subjects which again -- or perhaps still – are of contemporary relevance.
The film returns to the places which were so significant during this Chancellor's years at the helm: his office in the Chancellor in Bonn, where he came to sense the solitude and coldness of power are times when difficult decisions had to be made; London, where he held the crucial speech which later led to a NATO twin-track decision; Lake Werbellinsee, where he met East German leader Erich Honecker; Rambouillet Chateau near Paris, where the G7 meetings of the major industrial and economic powers were started, and Lake Brahmsee in Schleswig-Holstein, where he would go to recuperate and where he still enjoys spending time with his wife Loki.
Schmidt's 90th birthday on the 23rd of December is spent with a small group of old friends in the Langenhorn district of Hamburg. Looking back on his years as Chancellor just before his birthday he said: "In my eyes the eight years at when I was Chancellor were important, but not the most important in my life. The most important time in my life was the Nazi period, and the war. All I can say about the time when I was Chancellor is that it was tiring."
And then he adds: "I did my duty as well as I could."