On the occasion of Helmut Schmidt's 100th birthday. No other politician in the Federal Republic has enjoyed such a nearly cult-like reverence as Helmut Schmidt. Thomas Karlauf unfolds an intimate piece of German contemporary history in the extensive biography of his later years. Almost all biographies of Schmidt end with the year 1982, the year he left the chancellorship. Very little of his life in the thirty-three years that followed reached the outside world. How did this man, who was considered an average chancellor in 1982, become an idol for the Germans?.