ISTANBUL 

Longtime German politician Wolfgang Schaeuble died on Tuesday at home, surrounded by relatives, his family said in a statement to German media on Wednesday. He was 81.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that with the death of Schaeuble, Germany had lost a “sharp thinker, a passionate politician and a fierce democrat. My thoughts are with his family today.”

“Hardly any other politician has shaped recent German history and our democratic culture as much as Wolfgang Schaeuble. He has done such outstanding work for the unification of Germany and Europe," Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said on X, referring in part to Schaeuble’s pivotal role in the early 1990s reunification of Germany.

“Germany has lost one of its most important democrats,” said Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, adding: "He lived and worked responsibly for our country until the end."

Saying that the news of Schaeuble's death filled him with sadness, Friedrich Merz, the head of Schaeuble’s party, the Christian Democratic Union, added: “I lost the closest friend and advisor I had in politics.”

In a political career spanning over 50 years, Schaeuble perhaps most notably served as interior minister and finance minister, with the latter tenure spanning eight years, from 2009 to 2017, under then-Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Schaeuble then served as parliament speaker from 2017 to 2021, and continued to serve in the Bundestag after the CDU lost power.