Liliputin - 5123

After 1998 the  political career of Helmut Kohl - the Father of the German Unification is gone pear-shaped ... "
Angela Merkel

Liliputins. What, the heck, is this?
http://stihi.ru/2021/11/24/7101

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everything s gone pear-shaped
The meaning and the origins of "everything's gone pear-shaped."

Pear-shaped is an adjective that has two meanings. One meaning is having an oval shape that is narrower at one end, like a pear. The other meaning is free from harshness, thinness, or nasality in a vocal tone. Pear-shaped can also be used in the phrase "to go pear-shaped", which means to go wrong, to fail, or to fall apart. This phrase is often used to describe situations that have unexpected or disastrous outcomes.


I've recently heard this phrase spoken twice on a British television show, and I assume it means something along the lines of, "everything's fallen apart," generally meaning, things are bad right now. Is this correct?

Two follow-up questions:

1) What is the history of this idiom?

2) Is it commonly used in other countries?

For completeness, I should mention that in Terry Pratchett's Discworld, the phrase is used in any number of contexts, always amusingly. For example, wizards are pear-shaped, so magic is associated with it. It's one of the common expressions he took and modified for his own purposes. –

Wikipedia confirms that yes, it does mean what you think - but the etymology is less certain:

The third meaning is mostly limited to the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australasia. It describes a situation that went awry, perhaps horribly wrong. A failed bank robbery, for example, could be said to have "gone pear-shaped". Less well known in the US it generated some media interest when British politician Margaret Thatcher used the phrase in front of the world's press at one of her first meetings with U.S. President Ronald Reagan, with many reporters being unsure of the meaning of the term. The origin for this use of the term is in dispute. The OED cites its origin as within the Royal Air Force; as of 2003 the earliest citation there is a quote in the 1983 book Air War South Atlantic. Others date it to the RAF in the 1940s, from pilots attempting to perform aerial manoeuvres such as loops. These are difficult to form perfectly, and are usually noticeably distorted—i.e., pear-shaped.


I'm surprised that the earliest citation is from the 1980s. I'm sure that I can remember it from at least the 60s. Having said that I'm more familiar with as "gone a bit pear shaped" meaning "not quite succeded" or "gone all (or completely) pear shaped" meaning "failed spectacularly" than just "gone pear shaped". –

In Australia, I’ve mainly heard it used in the plain “gone pear shaped” form. –
Lawrence

I can think of other things that become pear-shaped by the force of gravity, Reagen's facial features for one, or the butt. Both stand in contrast to the round shape of an apple, cp. German "Apfel-Baeckchen". Indeed, cheeks, as well as "Backen" can mean either anatomy. Growing old is not exactly a spectacular tragedy, but a midlife-crisis does sound sever. "Birne" (pear) is a general euphemism for the head, with a slightly negative connotation. –

The OED entry (updated March 2003) for pear-shaped, adj. (paywalled), defines sense 3 as

colloquial (chiefly British, orig. R.A.F. slang). to go (also turn) pear-shaped: to go (badly) wrong, to go awry.

OED's earliest attestation is from 1983, in the context of the British response to the Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands:

J. Ethell & A. Price Air War South Atlantic 158 There were two bangs very close together. The whole aircraft shook and things went 'pear-shaped' very quickly after that. The controls ceased to work, the nose started to go down.

I was unable to confirm any earlier use in the RAF than that attested in 1983.

A use in 1968 (The Post-Crescent, Appleton, Wisconsin, 28 Apr, p. 79; paywalled) attests the earlier appearance of the sense:

And the way the world (a big weather balloon that leaked) went pear-shaped during a performance of "Love Makes the World Go 'Round."

Slang use of 'to go (also turn) pear-shaped' with the meaning "to go wrong, to go awry" in the RAF during World War II may derive from reports such as this 1938 (paywalled) description of the sinking of the US Gunboat Panay (Star Tribune, Then, from under the plane, a black dot appears...As it is darting toward you it becomes larger...Then there is a shape to it...A second later...it becomes a pear-shaped plummet, stream-lined for speed, trailing off in a fish-tail.
Hell from heaven, this plummet is a roaring bomb.

Indeed, bombs and mines were frequently described in UK newspapers as 'pear-shaped' during the war.

The mine, a large black pear-shaped object....

Newcastle Journal, 02 March 1940, p. 12 (paywalled).

It was a pear-shaped mine which when dropped from the air had a parachute attached to the "stalk" to deaden the shock of falling.

Belfast Telegraph, 02 March 1940, p. 7 (paywalled).

Examples of what is believed to be a new type of aeroplane bomb of enormous potency are being washed up...The bomb consists of a pear-shaped object three feet long and fifteen inches in diameter.

Liverpool Daily Post, 30 March 1940, p. 7 (paywalled).

In contrast to OED's derivation of 'to go pear-shaped' from RAF slang, Robert W. Holder, in How Not to Say What You Mean: a Dictionary of Euphemisms (Third Edition, 2002; originally published in 1987, revised for later editions) says this:

pear-shaped: unsuccessful

Probably from the form of an analyst's graph, the use having started as jargon in financial circles. As with the fruit, the weight is at the lower end...

Holder provides an attestation of the variant "went pear-shaped" from the Daily Telegraph of 20 June 1997.

A common trauma unrelated to the shapes of bombs may contribute to the comparative frequency of 'to go pear-shaped', and so to other constructions on the same model, in contemporary speech. The trauma, male menopause, is described in a 1942 Arizona Republic article:

;One common symptom in men is the increase in weight, particularly in lower abdomen and often a loss of fat and muscle also about the chest and shoulders. Instead of the wide shoulders and narrow or medium hips, he becomes pear shaped in appearance.

Women, it appears, suffer from a similar problem. None other than Emily Post, in 1932 (a syndicated column; paywalled), remarks, with phrasing identical to a variant of the later, more abstract figurative expression, that

Precisely as one should take setting-up exercises every day to keep one's figure from going pear-shaped in the hips....

Newspapers reran Post's 1932 advice in 1941, and again in 1949. The same phrasing characterizes other quasi-literal uses in the 1960s:

...[a black-and-white television] has developed a variety of tube troubles in old age. The picture often tends to squish in at the top, broaden at the middle, and then becomes narrow and curvy toward the bottom....
Well, a little aberration can be a devastating thing. What our TV did to thos 36-24-36 figures was bad enough to gladden the hearts of all overweight, over-thirty types.
The pageant wasn't boring, Miss Alexander, it was (if you'll pardon the expression) a riot. Imagine those dolls coming on looking so peachy and then suddenly going pear-shaped!

Garden City Telegram (Garden City, Kansas) 16 Oct 1968, p. 4 (paywalled).

Diamonds may be a girl's best friend after her figure goes pear-shaped, but they can be next to worthless too....

The Californian (Salinas, California) 10 May 1969, p. 1 (paywalled).

Also worth noting is the occasional mention of the 'pear-shaped problem'. The mentions are ill-defined, but show up earlier, bracket Post's quasi-literal uses, and may be the noun progenitor or a sibling of the verb phrase. Here are some examples:

An average of one child a day is killed by automobiles in Greater New York, showing that speed regulations and rules of the road still afford a large, pear-shaped problem for those who must solve it.

The Atchison Daily Globe (Atchison, Kansas) 30 Jan 1913, p. 4 (paywalled).

Now Iverson runs a posture clinic here. He concentrates on children because he believes the answer to the nation's pear-shaped problem lies in correcting youngsters early.

Press and Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, New York) 18 Aug 1950, p. 13 (paywalled).

"When one monkeys with Uncle Sam's security procedures, he's bound to have a large, pear-shaped problem on his hands," he continued.

The Hays Daily News (Hays, Kansas) 06 Jan 1972, p. 4 (paywalled).

All told, then, the absence of early direct primary source evidence for a British, RAF origin of 'to go pear-shaped', and the comparative abundance of evidence, in the form of identical phrasing, suggests an origin in the earlier quasi-literal expression of the sorry effects of aging on the human physique.

My dad was a WWII pilot from Newcastle, and he used "gone pear shaped" from time to time until he died. The bomb story rings true, and has a parallel in pranged –
Phil Sweet

@PhilSweet excellent anecdote, so can you confirm that the expression gone pear shaped is older than the 1980s? When were you born? I'm hoping in the 60s and not the 80s... –
Mari-Lou A
 
No, I can't. Like everyone else, internet searches go nowhere. My suspicion is that it was a local expression that was disseminated by pilot trainees during WWII. There is a 103 yo WWII pilot where my mom is, so I will try to ask him when I see him next. But it seems odd that dad would have acquired a new-fangled phrase from the '80's. But he could have picked it up from talking to relatives in England. –
Phil Sweet

The more I've investigated this, the more I like your answer. The associations with body shape are strong in the corpuses I've read. The same is true of a graph shape: some literal descriptions of problems or constraints follow that pattern, as in this 1995 article reprinted here: "The American economy is becoming pear-shaped, with highly skilled workers at the top, and a much larger underclass of unemployed, underemployed, or employed people in undemanding jobs at the bottom."

Jonathon Green, Chambers Slang Dictionary (2008) lists pear-shaped as a surprisingly recent slang coinage—certainly more recent than the 1940s/1950s period reported by The Phrase Finder and cited in Thursagen's answer. Here are the relevant entries from Green:

pear-shaped adj. {the image of a solid rectangle 'slipping down' into a pear shape, hence 'the bottom drops out'} {2000s} out of order, going badly or wrong.

go pear-shaped v. (also turn pear-shaped) {1990s+} of plans or schemes, to fail, to collapse.

I ran a series of exact-phrase searches for various related phrases at The British Newspaper Archive (a subscription service to which I am not a subscriber) to see what the earliest claimed matches are. Here's what the site delivered:

"go pear-shaped": Newcastle Journal (July 3, 1992); Liverpool Echo (May 18, 1995); Liverpool Echo (November 16, 1996); Liverpool Echo (December 7, 1996); [Dublin] Irish Independent (March 5, 1997).

"going pear-shaped": [Dublin] Irish Independent (June 14, 1997); [County Wexford] New Ross Standard (April 21, 1999); [Dublin] Sunday Tribune (April 25, 1999); [County Wexford] Wexford People (December 15, 1999); [Dublin] Evening Herald (December 30, 1999).

"gone pear-shaped": Liverpool Echo (January 27, 1997); [Dublin] Evening Herald (May 1, 1997); [County Kerry] Kerryman (May 30, 1997); Liverpool Echo (December 17, 1998); Liverpool Echo (March 3, 1999).

"went pear-shaped": [County Wicklow] Bray People (May 12, 1995); [County Wicklow] Bray People (September 14, 1995); [Dublin] Irish Independent (August 26, 1996); Liverpool Echo (May 31, 1997); [Dublin] Evening Herald (June 17, 1997).

"turn pear-shaped": [Dublin] Irish Independent (November 6, 1999); [Dublin] Evening Herald (July 16, 2001); [Dublin] Sunday Independent (April 3, 2005); [Dublin] Evening Herald (May 14, 2005); [Dublin] Irish Independent (July 25, 2005).

"turning pear-shaped": [Devon] Western Morning News (November 30, 1927); [Dublin] Sunday Tribune (December 13, 1998).

"turned pear-shaped": [Dublin] Sunday Independent (December 15, 1996); Liverpool Echo (December 26, 1998); [Dublin] Evening Herald (June 27, 2005); [Dublin] Evening Herald (January 30, 2009).

Since I couldn't check to see how many of these matches are false positives, I have no idea how many (if any) are actual matches for the specified exact phrase; nor do I know whether the British Newspaper Archive's database of searchable newspapers from recent decades comprises more than a handful of publications.

Nevertheless, I think it is noteworthy that—aside from a highly suspect outlier from 1927—the claimed matches are all from 1992 or later. This puts the claimed matches from the British Newspaper Archive in harmony with Jonathon Green's assertion that "go [or turn] pear-shaped" dates to "1990s+." As circumstantial evidence goes, it's not terribly strong—but it is something.

To confirm your suspicion: "Into this clear space the sun dipped, and as the lower limb neared the horizon the optical illusion of the disc turning pear-shaped was well seen." Western Morning News, 1927. –

@Kris: Yes, that was JEL's point: I had expressed strong skepticism about the possibility that the 1927 instance from the Devon Western Morning News of November 30, 1927, was relevant to the figurative usage that otherwise has not been clearly established as appearing in print before 1983—and JEL found the actual wording of the (paywalled) instance from 1927 and confirmed that it was literal. Thanks, JEL! –
Sven Yargs

'Pear Shaped' is a direct euphemism for 'Tits Up', meaning 'dead' or 'completely broken'. It is common in the RAF, and the first usage recorded by the OED comes from RAF usage in 1983. I was an RAF pilot in 1983, so can confirm this from personal experience. Faulty loops have always been referred to as 'egg-shaped', not pear shaped. This is due to the effect of gravity not being properly compensated for by students. There is no waisting effect to the shape in the error, hence egg not pear. If you check Wikipedia, you'll see the 'tactical egg' in the air combat manoeuvring section shows why this error occurs. I have not heard it commonly used by other nations, just people who have worked with the British and find the phrase funny.

Question 1: The history can be found in The Phrase Finder:

To go pear shaped is an expression used to indicate that a scheme has not been perfectly executed. The phrase seems to have originated in British English in the late 1940s or early 1950s. I have come across several suggested origins, but the best, for me, is related to training aircraft pilots. At some stage they are encouraged to try to fly loops - very difficult to make perfectly circular; often the trainee pilot's loops would go pear shaped.


A partial answer: I've done a database search of The New York Times archive. My choice was nonintuitive but hopeful: as a foreign newspaper to the phrase's RAF origins, the NYT might have been struck enough by the use to explain or gloss it. From this search, I can highlight two possible points of usage for the phrase "pear-shaped."

First, the fruit was used to describe an airplane part. Shape associations are common, with pear-shaped objects including pearls, hearts, geographical features, and of course fruit. An early description of a "missile" from a plane (really an unidentified object dropped from a plane) is probably incidental but shows its descriptive use. From "10-Pound Missile Hurtled from Airplane Narrowly Misses Children in Central Park." New York Times (1923-Current file), Dec 18, 1934, pp. 3:

Narrowly missing several children as they were playing in Central Park near East Sixty-second Street at 3:40 o'clock yesterday afternoon, a steel pear-shaped object, about four inches long and weighing between ten and fifteen pounds, fell out of the sky and imbedded itself six inches in the ground.

A few years later, a flight weight is described as pear-shaped. From "Plane Weight Falls Into Home." New York Times (1923-Current file); Jul 27, 1944:

A pear-shaped metal object which city and military police identified as an aerial weight plunged through the roof of a Syracuse house today while planes were flying overhead.

This led me to try to figure out what the object is. Here's (amateur historian?) John Evans, To the Ends of the Earth, Paterchurch Publications 1999:

Day flying, too, could have its unexpected moments. When coming in to land at Pembroke Dock Fred Perry's Southampton lost part of its trailing aerial, complete with pear-shaped weight, because the pilot had neglected to to tell him to wind the aerial in.

It is imaginable that losing such a weight could translate to losing control. That said, I'd need to understand exactly what this weight is. If it's a streamer that trails a plane, well, that would lead to a plane losing control.

Second, pear-shaped was used to describe aviation weaponry during the second World War. Note that the weapon described is air-to-air, and would effectively harass bomber crews. From Wireless to THE NEW,YORK TIMES. "Enemy Uses New Bomb." New York Times (1923-Current file), May 27, 1942, pp. 3.

Japanese fliers in the New Britain and New Guinea areas are using a new aerial bomb - described by United Nations pilots as pear-shaped or cone-shaped - as an offensive weapon against formations of United Nations planes returning from raids.

Enemy Zero fighters wait until the United Nations bombers have regained formation. Then the Zero pilots climb 1,000 feet above the bombers and drop the new bombs. The bombs explode violently, emitting a shower of shrapnel and bluish white smoke.

A disastrous encounter with such a weapon or the piloting maneuvers that follow might have led to referring to a "pear-shaped" flight path.

More work is needed. The two trails I've found don't yet connect convincingly to any slang usage. Rather, they are related to aviation and offer literal descriptions of items. Next time I have time, I'll do some digging in other sources to try to find early uses of the idiom, and then see if either of the explanations connect.

Another theory from The Word Detective:

As I said, the origin of "to go pear-shaped" is uncertain, but there are, as usual, several theories. The human body, as it ages, tends to acquire a bottom-heavy shape similar to a pear, perhaps giving us "pear-shaped" as another way of saying "things fall apart." A poster to the American Dialect Society mailing list a few years ago reported a theory that ties the phrase to ship construction in the 1950s using hot rivets. If the rivets were allowed to cool, they assumed a "pear" shape and were unusable.

A pear when put in water floats with it's bottom up. When something is failing (or falling over), it is said to be going pear shaped as it falls over. This expression is older than the RAF and aerobatics.


Stumbled upon this by chance and as a subject of Her Majesty I feel compelled to give an explanation. The earliest use of the phrase 'gone pear-shaped' that I have located was during the use of observation balloons during WW1. The use of spherical balloons was short-lived as the things would spin around wildly, not conducive to making accurate observations, so a sausage shaped balloon was designed and pressed in to service. When being inflated with hydrogen there were occasions where due to various conditions the balloons didn't inflate as designed and rather than becoming sausage shaped ... well I guess you've figured the rest out for yourself. Imagine the average Tommy running to his officer and reporting "sa, it's gone pear shaped sa!" Isn't history wonderful!

Having read theregister.co.uk enough, I see pear-shaped and tits up meaning the same thing: bad things have happened.

Some sources say pear-shaped means "broken" where tits up means "dead". However, I'm likely to assume these were more directly related than urban definitions propose.

tits up has an analog in belly up in AmE (think dead fish).


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Helmut Kohl

Helmut Josef Michael Kohl (3 April 1930 – 16 June 2017) was a German politician who served as Chancellor of West Germany from 1982 to 1990, Chancellor of Germany from 1990 to 1998 and Leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) from 1973 to 1998. Kohl's 16-year tenure is the longest of any German chancellor since Otto von Bismarck, and oversaw the end of the Cold War, the German reunification and the creation of the European Union (EU). Kohl's tenure of 16 years, 26 days is the longest for any democratically elected chancellor of Germany.

Born in Ludwigshafen to a Catholic family, Kohl joined the CDU in 1946 at the age of 16. He earned a PhD in history at Heidelberg University in 1958, and worked as a business executive before becoming a full-time politician. He was elected as the youngest member of the Parliament of Rhineland-Palatinate in 1959 and from 1969 to 1976 was minister president of the Rhineland-Palatinate state. Viewed during the 1960s and the early 1970s as a progressive within the CDU, he was elected national chairman of the party in 1973. After he had become party leader, Kohl was increasingly seen as a more conservative figure. In the 1976 and 1980 federal elections his party performed well, but the social-liberal government of social democrat Helmut Schmidt was able to remain in power. After Schmidt had lost the support of the liberal FDP in 1982, Kohl was elected Chancellor through a constructive vote of no confidence, forming a coalition government with the FDP. Kohl chaired the G7 in 1985 and 1992.

As Chancellor, Kohl was committed to European integration and especially to the Franco-German relationship; he was also a steadfast ally of the United States and supported Ronald Reagan's more aggressive policies to weaken the Soviet Union. Following the Revolutions of 1989, his government acted decisively, culminating in the German reunification in 1990. Kohl and French president Fran;ois Mitterrand were the architects of the Maastricht Treaty which established the EU and the Euro currency. Kohl was also a central figure in the eastern enlargement of the EU, and his government led the effort to push for international recognition of Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina when the states declared independence. He played an instrumental role in resolving the Bosnian War. Domestically Kohl's policies from 1990 focused on integrating former East Germany into reunified Germany, and he moved the federal capital from the "provisional capital" Bonn back to Berlin, although he never resided there because the government offices were only relocated in 1999. Kohl also greatly increased federal spending on arts and culture. After his chancellorship, Kohl became honorary chairman of the CDU in 1998 but resigned from the position in 2000 in the wake of the CDU donations scandal which damaged his reputation domestically.

Kohl received the 1988 Charlemagne Prize and was named Honorary Citizen of Europe by the European Council in 1998. Following his death, Kohl was honored with the first-ever European act of state in Strasbourg. Kohl was described as "the greatest European leader of the second half of the 20th century" by US presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

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The Pear Who Ate Germany
Helmut Kohl was an unlikely political heavyweight, but his relentless drive helped put East and West back together.
By Josef Joffe

JUNE 18, 2017, 7:47 AM
When Helmut Kohl toppled Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1982, a prominent Washingtonian, who knew both well, quipped: “There leaves a great man and enters a large man.” Kohl, who died at the age of 87 at his home on Friday, was certainly large, weighing in at 300 pounds and measuring six foot four. Would he also rise to greatness during his 16 years at Germany’s helm?

Size is not destiny, one way or the other. General de Gaulle topped Helmut Kohl by one inch and achieved greatness as le grand Charles. Churchill and Napoleon, giants both, were dwarfs by comparison, measuring just 5 feet 6 inches each. So height or bulk is a fickle predictor. It’s history that matters. Would Napoleon and Churchill have grown into legends in their own time without the extraordinary opportunities of the French Revolution and World War II?

For Kohl, the test came at the end of the Cold War, when Europe’s cast-in-concrete order suddenly collapsed. He did not seem cut out for greatness. Born in 1930, he embarked on a typically German career in politics — plodding, grinding, and climbing. He joined the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) at 18. Next stops: city council, member of the state legislature, caucus leader, prime minister of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, vice chairman of the national party, then finally, chairman.

When he first went for the chancellorship at the age of 46, he lost to his nemesis, Helmut Schmidt. Six years later, in 1982, he grabbed the prize — but not in a general election, rather by dint of a parliamentary maneuver. Schmidt’s junior coalition partners, the Liberals, defected to the CDU and thus helped to anoint Kohl far from the voting booths.

Who would have thought that this machination would launch 16 years of rule, from 1982 to 1998? Only Bismarck has done better, serving the Kaiser for 19 years. They called Otto von Bismarck the “Iron Chancellor.” Kohl would be ridiculed as die Birne, “the Pear” — a snide comment on his body shape. His detractors did not see the core of steel lurking inside the roly-poly mass of flesh that would expand year after year, in spite of Kohl’s regular pilgrimages to the fat farm.

A Bavarian colleague loves to tell the story of Kohl’s visit to a Munich restaurant where the chancellor jovially asked the waiter for the fare of the day. The man went on and on: several kinds of soup, an array of different sausages with sauerkraut, pig’s knuckles, dumplings, schnitzel, suckling pig…. Kohl responded cheerfully: “Yes!” The flustered waiter whispered: “You mean alles, all of the above?” Kohl nodded. After he had plowed through heaps of victuals, he started picking off meat chunks from neighboring plates.

The Pear’s sense of humor was equal to his appetite. In a conversation with Henry Kissinger, he mused: “Henry, what would have become of you if your parents had not been driven from Germany?”

“Well, like my father,” responded Kissinger, “I would have become a Bavarian high school teacher, but I would probably have advanced from small-town Fuerth to Nuremberg.”

“Oh, no,” grinned Kohl, “you would have made it at least to Munich, the capital.”

After his first re-election in 1983, this voracious omnivore began to make history. Veterans of the Cold War remember the pacifist-neutralist revolt sweeping through Europe at the time, with West Germany at the center. NATO had decided to field U.S. cruise and Pershing II missiles in response to the Soviet deployment of Backfire bombers and SS-20 missiles — intermediate-range nuclear weapons that could hit Europe, but not the United States.

Millions were thronging German cities in protest, accusing the United States of conspiring to fight a nuclear war, far from its own shores. The fate of the counter-deployment and the course of the Cold War would be decided in West Germany, the linchpin. A German nein would have delivered a historic victory to Moscow. But Kohl stood fast in support of the U.S. deployment and won his 1983 re-election campaign. Twenty-four hours later, the Pershings began to arrive in Germany.

Kohl’s courageous all-in gambit was the beginning of the end of the Cold War. In 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev agreed on “double-zero”: no Pershings for the United States, no SS-20s for the Kremlin. Thanks to Kohl, the alliance had passed its most deadly test, and the “evil empire,” as Reagan called it, never recuperated. Three years later, in 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and on Christmas Day in 1991, the USSR committed suicide, leaving behind 15 orphan republics.

These two years were the “large man’s” moment of greatness, yet without a shot being fired. Suddenly, an impossible dream came true: Germany was reunified in 1990. Not that the chancellor had a blueprint; indeed, when the wall came down, he was as rattled as everybody else. What to do when a seemingly eternal order was collapsing?

Kohl rushed back from a visit to Warsaw, gingerly proclaiming a long-term, step-by-step program moving from cooperation with the communist half of Germany to confederation and eventually full unification. Yet history did not tarry, not with East Germans clamoring, “If the deutsche mark does not come to us, we will come to the deutsche mark” — that is, march westward by the millions. The German Democratic Republic collapsed into the Federal Republic’s arms.

Britain, France, and Italy were less enthusiastic, trying to brake — if not stop — the hurtling train. Enter President George H. W. Bush, who grasped where history was heading. Kohl and Germany were lucky to have him. The United States cleared the way, running interference against London, Paris, Rome, and Moscow while Kohl paid billions in ransom money to the Soviets. Within a few months, Germany was reunified — and then inside NATO, which Moscow had fought tooth and nail for decades.

Does the man make history, or history the man? Kohl probably would have lost the election of 1990 if not for the windfall of reunification. The electorate had grown tired of him: a leader whose size dwarfed his charisma. Suddenly, he shone forth as Kanzler der Einheit, the chancellor presiding over national unification. But there was more than sheer luck. Kohl, a trained historian, instinctively understood that Germany reborn, then (again) the strongest player in Europe, would have to reassure — nay, compensate — its neighbors to allay their angst.

Relentlessly, he pushed for more European integration in order to take the sting out of Germany’s rise, which in the past had always unhinged the continental balance. The euro, the common currency, was conceived in those chaotic days. If they ever make a movie of the time, it will open in the Elysee Palace, with Kohl entreating French President Francoise Mitterrand to set aside three wars fought in as many generations. With a bit of poetic license, the script might make Kohl coo: “Look, Francois, we have learned our lesson. No more jackboots and panzers. We are now safely integrated in Europe and NATO, which have defanged German power.” Mitterrand sighs: “Bon, mon ami. You get all of Germany, and I get my hands on the deutsche mark.”

The moral of this tale is a Germany triumphant, yet tamed by self-containment. Would that the Kaiser and Der Fuhrer had been so wise. By voluntarily putting the ropes back on the German Gulliver, Kohl defused Europe’s fear of the Fourth Reich. This is why he deserves a place in history.

His compatriots savored this feat only briefly. Reunification turned out to be an expensive proposition, costing the country about 4 percent of its GDP year after year, with no end in sight. Future historians will give Kohl his due, but also note that he turned into a tragic figure. He was ousted from power in 1998. One year later, he became mired in a party financing scandal. Refusing to name the donors (“I have given my word of honor”), he paid a fine of $150,000. As in a Shakespearean tragedy, Kohl’s prot;g;e Angela Merkel thrust the dagger into her mentor when she used the affair to declare his days “irretrievably gone.” The CDU had to learn to fight for power without its “old war horse.”

Parricide worked. Kohl lost the chairmanship of the party to Merkel, who went on to win the chancellorship in 2005. Kohl’s wife committed suicide, his son Walter turned against him. Seriously impaired since 2008, Kohl ended up in a wheelchair, hardly able to speak. Thus do the mighty fall. Yet history will record that this large man did grow into a great man.