The chancellor’s ‘firefighter’

Date: 30/11/1995

IN 1984, Joachim Bitterlich moved from Bonn to Brussels to take up the second foreign job of his short career.

The promising young diplomat had been posted to the EU's capital city to serve as the ambassador's right-hand man at Germany's mission to the European Community. Eleven years later, the junior official of the early Eighties has become a hidden power that mandarins fear to meet, the bête noir of some of his former colleagues and one of the architects of his country's European ambitions.

As Chancellor Helmut Kohl's closest foreign policy adviser, 47-year-old Bitterlich belongs to a small coterie of youngish officials who shape and coordinate European thinking at the very top.

Even senior officials in the foreign ministries, supposedly the most eminent and traditionally most glamorous of all government departments, can be heard complaining bitterly about the increasing flow of vital information that reaches their desks only when there is nothing left to settle.

Their own carefully-balanced studies and analyses, they say, end up unread in their masters' wastepaper baskets or rot away in ministerial archives.

To many German diplomats, Bitterlich has become the living embodiment of their frustration and their minister Klaus Kinkel's gradual political emasculation.

The man who keeps an open door for his small team of collaborators, cheerfully waves away the hierarchies of officialdom and is praised abroad as an intelligent and perceptive listener, has a rare talent for conjuring up enormous enmity from the senior bureaucrats who dare to cross his path.

“He speaks clearly and to the point, which is unusual for a diplomat,” says a former collaborator. “But when you get on the wrong side of him, you get all the flak, regardless of rank or pre-eminence.”

Considering his comparatively low official rank and his lack of elected office, Bitterlich's influence seems extraordinary in a country which is unfamiliar with the system of appointed 'membres de cabinet' overruling the hierarchy and laying down government policy. The foundation of his power has only one source: his total political empathy with Helmut Kohl, a fact which has led some people to nickname him 'der kleine Kanzler'.

“The reason why Kohl likes him so much is that Bitterlich knows, agrees with and carries out what Kohl thinks,” comments one close observer. “When Bitterlich speaks, you never know whether it is the chancellor speaking through him. So people watch what they say.”

Despite the mutual trust that has grown between the two men, Bitterlich, it is said in Bonn, has never joined the 'kitchen cabinet' of old cronies with whom Kohl famously likes to relax, eat and philosophise after the end of a long working day. Indeed, the gaunt silhouette of the foreign policy adviser sits oddly with the entourage of rotund bon vivants with whom Germany's gargantuan chancellor loves to spend his time.

As an ascetic-looking workaholic whose fair hair and military bearing might have cast him as the more intellectual Prussian type, Bitterlich has an unlikely passion: a lifelong fascination with France.

Born three years after the end of World War II in the steel city of Saarbrücken, next to the Franco-German border, Bitterlich spent the early Seventies reading law, politics and economics in his provincial home town.

But while many of his contemporaries dabbled in drugs, radical politics or an alternative lifestyle, the brilliant young student and reserve officer took leave of redbrick academia and moved on to the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA) in Paris.

He spent a crucial year at this training ground for future rulers of the Grande Nation, becoming part of a network of highly-influential acquaintances which was to prove invaluable later on in his career.

With such credentials, Bitterlich's acceptance into the diplomatic service in 1976 was virtually a formality and his first foreign posting to Algiers was followed by the job in Brussels.

After spending two years intensively honing his diplomatic and negotiating skills in the European capital, Bitterlich took his next step up the ladder by joining then Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher's private ministerial office in Bonn. Two years later, he moved to the Bundeskanzleramt, the chancellor's office in Bonn.

As a chief of department responsible for relations with European institutions and governments, the polyglot Bitterlich gradually took on a key role as Kohl's crisis manager, departing on discreet fact-finding or consensus-building missions in Paris or even Washington.

“He is the chancellor's emergency team, his rapid reaction firefighting service,” explains an insider.

As Kohl increasingly turned to Bitterlich for advice on European policy, the departure of the long-serving Genscher in 1992 hastened the decline of the German foreign ministry's influence.

In 1993, Bitterlich took charge of all foreign, security and development policy at the chancellor's office. To the frustration of many diplomats, defining and deciding the central issues of European policy became the exclusive prerogative of the Bundeskanzleramt.

Keen to shape the course of political history, Bitterlich is one of those power-brokers who prefer real influence to the trappings of high office, and agreed to serve in a bigger statesman's shadow. While not pushing for any public recognition, Bitterlich is too clever to shun the media. Like many other senior figures in Bonn, he regularly summons a small gathering of friendly or important journalists, known as the 'Gruppe Großes Ohr' (Big Ear Group) to background briefings.

They may be off the record, but Bitterlich never uses the meetings to pursue any political agenda different from that of Kohl. “His loyalty to the chancellor is absolute,” says one participant in those gatherings.

Unlike most who thrive in the inner circle, Bitterlich values his collaborators and likes teamwork. His often grim and watchful public persona belies an ability to stay in a cheerful mood while working hard.

The late hours he puts in at the office leave the family man, who is married to a French woman and has three children, with little time for the pursuit of pleasures not related to his work. But he is keen to maintain a network of international connections with like-minded wheelers and dealers. US peace envoy Richard Holbrooke, the man behind the peace in Bosnia, is said to be one of those useful friends.