Helmut Kohl, Germany’s ex-chancellor and architect of reunification in 1990, has died at 87.
Kohl led Germany for 16 years (from 1982 to 1998). He is credited with bringing East and West Germany together after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Together with his French ally President Francois Mitterrand, he was responsible for the introduction of the euro.
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has ordered flags at EU institutions to be flown at half-mast.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said his death filled her with deep sadness.
“It will take a while before we can really appreciate what we have lost with his passing,” she said.
“Helmut Kohl was a great German and a great European. Helmut Kohl’s efforts brought about the two greatest achievements in German politics of recent decades – German reunification and European unity.
“Helmut Kohl understood that the two things were inseparable.”
For his part, Mr Juncker said in a tweet: “Helmut’s death hurts me deeply.”
“My mentor, my friend, the very essence of Europe, he will be greatly, greatly missed.”
Former US President George HW Bush paid tribute to the man he knew while in office from 1989 to 1993 as a “true friend of freedom” and “one of the greatest leaders in post-war Europe”.
German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel paid tribute to a “great German statesman and above all a great European”.
Kohl suffered a bad fall in 2008 and had been using a wheelchair.
He died at his house in Ludwigshafen, in the western state of…