Image copyright EPA Image caption Despite occasional differences, Mr Kohl forged alliances with UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and US President Ronald Reagan

Helmut Kohl, Germany's ex-chancellor and architect of reunification in 1990, has died at 87. Shortly after leaving office, Kohl's reputation was tarnished by a financing scandal in his centre-right party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), now led by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Image copyright AFP Image caption A piece of the Berlin Wall was erected in Kohl's garden in 2011 as a souvenir

He died at his house in Ludwigshafen, in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Bild newspaper reports. Over his 16 years at the country’s helm from 1982 to 1998 — first for West Germany and then for all of a united Germany — Kohl combined a dogged pursuit of European unity with a keen instinct for history.
Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl dies at the age of 87.