German ex-finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, who helped steer the eurozone through the debt crisis, has died at the age of 81, Paul Kirby reported for BBC News.

An MP for 51 years in Germany's Bundestag, Schäuble played a key role in negotiating German reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I Photo: Jolanda Flubacher, World Economic Forum; swiss-image.ch Flickr
An MP for 51 years in Germany's Bundestag, he played a key role in negotiating German reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
He then survived an attempt on his life by a mentally unstable gunman. Although never chancellor, Schäuble was widely viewed as one of Germany's most influential post-war politicians.
Current Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he had shaped his country for more than half a century, and Germany had lost "a sharp thinker, a passionate politician, and a pugnacious Democrat."
Angela Merkel, whose cabinet he served in for 12 years, said when she was a young minister Wolfgang Schäuble was her "political mentor." Former UK Chancellor George Osborne praised Schäuble as "a great man, who had unified his country and was the last of the post-war Germans."
For many Greeks, however, he was a hate figure during the eurozone debt crisis, as the architect of a highly unpopular austerity program imposed on their country. Former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said history would "judge him harshly."
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