German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, who's survived an assassination attempt and a career scandal, has become one of the most vivid players in the Greek debt saga. Photo / AFP
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, who's survived an assassination attempt and a career scandal, has become one of the most vivid players in the Greek debt saga. Photo / AFP
Wolfgang Schäuble is a wheelchair-bound 72-year-old who's spent much of his career calling for a harmonious, integrated Europe.
He is also an austerity advocate whose inflexibility in the face of Greece's economic misery has come to symbolize Europe's tough prescriptions for the nation.
"He's been sucking your blood for five years," said a poster bearing Schäuble's dour image that popped up across Athens last week. "Now tell him NO."
Few on the continent hold a more impassioned view about the importance of economic integration.
But for Schäuble (pronounced SHOY-bleh), membership in the eurozone comes at a price: Money borrowed in bailouts must be paid back, no matter how crushing the burden of that debt.
The five-year debate over how - or whether - to rescue Greece has come to a potential breaking point in Brussels, where Athens and its European creditors have been sparring over new bailout terms.
Though Schäuble is just one in a roomful of politicians with a say in the matter, he has helped craft the austerity terms of European creditors, following a code of fiscal prudence that is near-sacred among Germans of his generation.
His support is likely to be necessary for any new deal that restores emergency funding to Greece.
In his years dealing with the euro crisis, Schäuble has become one of the most vivid players in the saga - someone who survived an assassination attempt, resuscitated his career after scandal and occasionally tries to undercut his reputation as a humourless negotiator. (Several months ago, he offered Greece's finance minister a box of chocolate euros, saying that he'd need "nourishment for the nerves.")
Schäuble, who started his legislative career at age 30, is the longest-serving member of the Bundestag, the German Parliament, and grew up near the French border during a time of reconciliation in Western Europe.
As a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union, he has since been a champion for a Europe where nations give up part of their sovereignty for the sake of continental unity.
Some attribute his debt aversion to a mind-set born of a national legacy of currency fluctuations and hyperinflation.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble (L) speaks with the British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (C) and French Finance and Public Accounts Minister Michel Sapin (R). Photo / AFP
Just days after Germany's reunification in 1990, Schäuble survived a shooting carried out by a schizophrenic man at a campaign rally. Schäuble returned to work just three months later, burnishing his reputation for toughness, but he's since been confined to a wheelchair and sometimes suffers from health complications.
"I will never forget how this man was lying on the floor before me, bleeding," said Schäuble's biographer, Hans Peter Schutz, who witnessed the shooting.
"His teenage daughter, who was standing by the door, kept shouting, 'Daddy, Daddy, what's wrong with you?'"
After the shooting, Schäuble was one of Germany's most visible politicians, often mentioned as a future chancellor.
But he was forced to step down as party chairman in 2000 because of a wide donations scandal in which he accepted $50,000 from an arms lobbyist. He was replaced by Angela Merkel, who is now chancellor.
Since 2009, Schäuble and Merkel have managed the euro crisis for Germany, Greece's largest creditor.
Merkel is widely considered the more conciliatory of the two, while Schäuble has become known for a controversial doctrine that countries - even those in crisis - should cut spending rather than rack up debt to stimulate growth.
During a visit to Washington in April, Schäuble, speaking at the Brookings Institution, pointed to debt as the toxin in almost every global financial ill over the past 20 years.
He crowed about balancing Germany's budget and shrugged off a suggestion that his country, which can borrow on favourable terms, should be doing more to invest in education and other assets.
"One of the major problems of the world economy is a high level of indebtedness," he said.
"To increase this indebtedness is not a good solution."
The Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, has been emboldened by a referendum Sunday in which voters signalled that they want a more generous package from Europe - and are willing to crash out of the eurozone if they can't get it.
But viewpoints have also hardened among fiscal conservatives in creditor nations who are wary of granting leniency to a government they see as reckless.
According to political scientists and German media accounts, Schäuble believes that Europe could survive a Greek exit and might emerge better off without its weakest link.
He'd be willing to sacrifice Greece. Maybe you have to break a few eggs to make that omelette.
"He views Greece as a threat to his particular vision for where Europe should be going," said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow and Europe specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
"And he'd be willing to sacrifice Greece. Maybe you have to break a few eggs to make that omelette."
In large part because of his ideals, Greece has especially frustrated Schäuble.
In his view, the plan to rehabilitate the Greek economy was working until earlier this year, when frustrated voters ushered in a leftist party that pledged a big step back from austerity.
At Brookings, Schäuble mentioned that Greece until recently was seeing nascent growth.
He didn't mention that its economy has shrunk 25 percent over the past five years.
"Greece has been on a promising way," he said, giving a little shrug. "Then they campaigned; it's a sovereign decision of the Greek people. And now we have a new government, and they want to change things."
Merkel and Schäuble remain tight allies, though some question whether their differing opinions on Greece have caused friction.
In dealing with Athens, Schäuble is a "counterweight to Merkel's conciliatory stance," said Herfried Münkler, a political scientist at Berlin's Humboldt University. "He has a much clearer, straightforward line."
The International Monetary Fund said recently that Greece's debt is unsustainable and will require another significant "haircut." But Schäuble in April said he thought Greece could repay its debt without any restructuring, and he pointed to what he said were uncorrected structural problems, including a bloated public sector and an excessive minimum wage.
"Those are the real challenges of Greece," he said, "not to blame the Europeans."
