Hannelore Kohl

Hannelore Kohl (1976)

Hannelore Kohl (March 7, 1933, Berlin – July 5, 2001) was the wife of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. She met him for the first time at a prom in Ludwigshafen, Germany, when she was 15 years old.

She was born in Berlin and was christened Johanna Klara Eleonore Renner. Her father was Wilhelm Renner, who headed the employment office at HASAG that developed the successful one-man anti-tank weapon, the Panzerfaust. Later, she chose the composition "Hannelore" to be used as her first name.

In the days following Germany's defeat in World War II, at the age of 12, Hannelore Kohl was raped by Red Army soldiers and subsequently “thrown out of a window like a sack of potatoes by the Russians.” In addition to the obvious psychological impact, the attacks left her with a fractured vertebra and back pain for the rest of her life. In order to help others with similar injuries, in 1983 Hannelore Kohl founded the Kuratorium ZNS, a foundation that helps those with trauma-induced injuries to the central nervous system, and became its President.

On July 5, 2001, Kohl was found dead at age 68 in her Ludwigshafen home. She had apparently committed suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills, after years of suffering from what she had claimed to be a very rare and painful photo allergy induced by an earlier penicillin treatment that had forced her to avoid practically all sunlight for years. In 2005, the Kuratorium ZNS was renamed ZNS - Hannelore Kohl Stiftung in her honor.

However, journalist Andrew Gimson, writing in The Spectator, cast doubt upon the official version of events. Similar questions were also raised by the German newsmagazine, Stern and the BBC.

Kohl is known for her collection of German-style cooking recipes published as Kulinarische Reise durch Deutsche Länder (Culinary Journey through German Regions) which was published in 1996.

Publications

Edited By

• A Culinary Tour of Germany, München, Germany: Zabert Sandmann, 1996, ISBN 3924678871