Helmet Kohl makes rare appearance to urge Europe to solve crisis and avert war "The introduction of the euro was about stability and we feel an obligation here," she said. We can't solve this crisis in one fell swoop. We need to take a considered approach. Mr Kohl was one of the towering European leaders of the second half of the 20th century. At the event on Thursday, he was praised in taped video tributes by former US President George H.W. Bush, Britain's John Major, France's Edouard Balladur and Israel's Shimon Peres. Yet his legacy has been recast, revised and redrawn many times over the past decades and its final chapter has probably not been written. In Germany and abroad, he is celebrated as the father of German reunification, though his promise of "flourishing landscapes" in the east failed to materialise. Mr Kohl's other landmark achievement, pushing through the euro together with French President Francois Mitterrand, was hailed as a huge success in the currency's first decade. But it looks less glorious after three years of crisis that have raised the prospect of a catastrophic euro breakup. Some in Germany now blame Mr Kohl for pressing ahead with the euro without insisting on closer political and fiscal integration as a condition - a decision that Merkel has denounced publicly as an epic mistake. Mr Kohl's defenders point out that it was his successor as chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, who allowed Greece into the bloc and watered down EU budget rules. Another black mark on Mr Kohl's record is the party funding scandal that soured his relationship with Ms Merkel, whom he'd plucked from obscurity after the Berlin Wall fell and brought into his cabinet. It was Ms Merkel who engineered her party's break from Mr Kohl, urging the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to move on "without its old war horse" when the scandal erupted. But enough time has now passed for both to have recognised the benefits of a rapprochement. "This is an attempt at reconciliation," Gerd Langguth, a professor at Bonn University said of Thursday's event. Both sides realise it is time for Mr Kohl to return to the bosom of the party. Ms Merkel may also hope that bringing him back into the fold will help unify the CDU in the run-up to an election next year in which she will fight for a third term. Some believe the event may be the start of a rebranding of Ms Merkel as a "great European" in the tradition of Mr Kohl and Konrad Adenauer. "So far, Ms Merkel hasn't told the right story to the German people," a former minister in Mr Kohl's cabinet who attended Thursday's event told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Her message has been that Germany is right and others in Europe must become like us. This will never happen. We cannot Germanise Europe. Mr Kohl understands this. We can only hope this event is a sign that Ms Merkel is beginning to realise that, too.