Science Fair Project Encyclopedia
Wolfgang Schäuble
Wolfgang Schäuble (born September 18 1942) is a German CDU politician. After holding numerous posts in Helmut Kohl's cabinet he served as Chairman of the CDU (1998-2000). In 1990 Schäuble was seriously injured in an assassination attempt. He survived, but was paralysed from the waist down. Between 1991 and 1994 he served as Kohl's Minister of the Interior. By the mid-1990s Kohl was publicly endorsing Schäuble as his eventual successor, which helped reinforce a widely held view of Schäuble as a "Chancellor-in-waiting".
After the CDU's defeat to Gerhard Schröder's SPD in the 1998 election, Schäuble succeeded Kohl as Chairman of the party, but resigned after the CDU found itself embroiled in a massive party financing scandal. He was succeeded by Angela Merkel.
The contents of this article is licensed from www.wikipedia.org under the GNU Free Documentation License. Click here to see the transparent copy and copyright details