There has always been something maritime about Helmut Schmidt's public image: "the pilot", "the captain", "the doer" during the Hamburg flood disaster, in many photos sporting a proper Elbe pilot's cap.
His sailing roots lie on the Alster, where he learnt how to handle the sheet and tiller in the Hitler Youth: "The best thing about the Hitler Youth was the cutter sailing on the Alster, which I soon swapped for rowing with great enthusiasm," Schmidt is quoted as saying in Sabine Pamperrien's recently published biography. Decades later, in an interview with Hamburg's First Mayor Olaf Scholz, published in DIE ZEIT, he explained with a twinkle in his eye exactly what it was that made the then rather slight Hamburg lad so enthusiastic about sailing: "I haven't rowed since I was a child. It was too strenuous for me. I was glad that I could sail."
Schmidt later became an enthusiastic Conger sailor, and from 1958 the former member of the Bundestag and his wife Loki owned a holiday home on Lake Brahmsee. His Conger was also moored there, where the Schmidt family spent their holidays relaxing. However, Schmidt had nothing to do with the sporty laser he received as a gift from Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau: He just called it "the flatboard".
A life completely devoid of glamour: the terraced house in Hamburg-Langenhorn and the holiday home on Lake Brahmsee. During a speech as Federal Chancellor at the Cologne Sports University in 1979, when confronted with the interjection that sailing was elitist, he simply replied: "Sailing? It hasn't been elitist for a long time. Maybe in Cologne, but not here on the coast!" Just Schmidt's snout.
He made it clear to the DSV what he thought of state interference in the sport of sailing on the fringes of the Kiel Week in 1976: "As a sailor, to put it bluntly, I don't want to be bothered by the authorities!"
The "man with the quick mouth", as the young member of the Bundestag introduced himself in 1957, died yesterday, Tuesday, in his home town of Hamburg.
