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Heribert Schwan's revealing book: "Legacy - The Kohl Protocols"
Photo: Oliver Berg/dpa
The publicist Heribert Schwan has suffered defeat in the ongoing legal dispute over his tell-all book about former Chancellor Helmut Kohl. The Cologne Higher Regional Court has banned further passages that not only concern quotes from Kohl, but also descriptions and assessments by Schwan. He had worked as a ghostwriter for Kohl. Although witnesses such as Kohl's son Walter confirmed in the previous trial that Kohl had not entered into a written confidentiality agreement with Schwan, the court assumed that confidentiality was implied because Schwan worked for Kohl.
The journalist and historian Schwan wrote his memoirs as a ghostwriter together with Kohl at the beginning of the noughties. Schwan recorded Kohl's long descriptions of his political life on cassette. However, before writing the final volume of memoirs, which was supposed to deal with Kohl's deselection and the CDU donations affair, the two fell out. Schwan then published the book »Legacy. The Kohl Protocols«. It contained unauthorized statements from the former Federal Chancellor, in particular drastic value judgments about other politicians.
Kohl then sued Schwan. He argued that the comments made public by Schwan were never intended for the public. Since his death in 2017, the proceedings have been continued by his widow Maike Kohl-Richter.
Schwan was disappointed with the decision. "If I had been asked to keep things confidential, I would have run away," he told the dpa news agency. From a journalistic point of view, it is “unbelievable” that even quotes that do not refer to Helmut Kohl’s statements at all, but to evaluations of him, Schwan, have now been banned. This includes, among other things, descriptions of how the conversations went and why, from Schwan's point of view, there was a break.
Kohl was Chancellor from 1982 to 1998. German reunification took place during his reign.
czl/dpa