BERLIN, Jan 16: Former Chancellor Helmut Kohl said in a television interview that he had discussed the question of suicide with his wife Hannelore before she took her life last year.

Hannelore, who was married to Kohl for 41 years, committed suicide last July to escape the pain of a rare illness that made her extremely sensitive to light.

“We spoke about it,” Kohl told ZDF television in an interview late on Tuesday, when asked if he had discussed suicide with his wife.

Kohl, 71, has given few interviews in the past two years, since a slush fund scandal damaged his reputation as the man who reunified East and West Germany and dominated West German politics in his 16 years as Chancellor.

In the ZDF interview, Kohl spoke in more detail than ever before about his wife’s illness, which was triggered in 1993 by an allergic reaction to penicillin.

“It was getting worse all the time. Her quality of life was steadily deteriorating. You can’t picture this unless you’ve lived through it, what life is like for someone who can no longer see daylight or the sun,” Kohl said.

“Looking ahead, it was quite likely that she would have to go into an intensive care unit. She said ‘I don’t want to do this,’” said Kohl. “In her farewell letter, she wrote that ‘Every plant needs light. I had 68 good years, but I don’t want to go downhill like this’.”—Reuters