Final farewell to Kohl's wife

Kohl follows his wife's coffin after the memorial service

SPEYER, Germany -- Crowds of mourners have packed a cathedral to pay their last respects to the wife of former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

People pushed their way through to get a glimpse of Hannelore Kohl's sealed wooden coffin covered in flowers and wreaths in the town of Speyer on Wednesday.

They also signed condolence books at the entrance of the cathedral in memory of the 68-year-old, who committed suicide last week to end the pain caused by a rare illness. Hannelore had an allergy to light that kept her virtually housebound.

She was later buried in a family grave in the nearby town of Ludwigshafen, where she and the former chancellor lived for 41 years.

Many family friends and dignitaries, including current German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, attended the memorial service.

"She gave our family all her energy, her love and her devotion," the service leaflet read.

"She served our country in an incomparable way and did good for her fellow people wherever she could."

Kohl, 71, who had 16 years in office and is now a non-cabinet conservative member of Germany's parliament, was comforted by friends.

"It would have been hard if she had died from illness, but it would have been easier for him to take," family friend Eduard Ackermann, Kohl's former spokesman, told Der Spiegel weekly. "I don't know how the old man is going to cope with it."

Locals, who stood for hours to enter the cathedral, said the financial scandal that surrounded Kohl compounded Hannelore's illness, and their feelings were echoed by the priest at the service, Monsignor Erich Ramstatter.

Kohl was involved in a party funding scandal in which he admitted taking $1 million in undeclared donations for his Christian Democrats.

Ramstatter told the congregation that he was not sure Kohl's accusers knew the power of the attacks on him.

"All the accusations and slander and hateful insults became your mutual bitter suffering," he said.

Kohl, wearing a dark suit and blue tie and sitting next to his sons Peter and Walter, wiped his eyes repeatedly during the sermon by Ramstatter, an old friend.

The priest, his voice often cracking, said he hoped Hannelore, who died last week, was now free from pain.

"I don't know if they (Kohl's accusers) were aware what it means to want to steal the honour of a person," Ramstatter said. "Hannelore has shared this difficult fate in a partnership of love and faithfulness and stuck with you to the end, dear Helmut."

Local Waltrud Koehler, 61, who waited in the rain ahead of the service for three hours, said he too believed the accusations against Kohl had affected his wife, telling Reuters: "It was awful how the press went after Helmut Kohl. It hurt her too. I definitely don't think that it was just the light illness."

A neighbour of the Kohls added: "I couldn't eat or sleep for two days after I heard. We didn't know she was so ill. The media coverage definitely hurt her."

Although Hannelore was born a Protestant in Berlin in 1933, the Kohl family asked that the service be held in the Catholic cathedral where the couple had taken prominent guests during Kohl's years in power.

Hannelore left farewell letters for her husband and their two sons, Walter and Peter, saying she had taken her own life because of her health.

Her illness was triggered in 1993 by an allergic reaction to penicillin. The pain took a turn for the worse 15 months ago, confining her to her home where she was found dead last Thursday.