On the death of Hans-Dietrich Genscher

Berlin (dpa) - Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who died late Thursday at the age of 89, will best be remembered for his central role in bringing down the Iron Curtain that divided his country and Europe until 1989.

Germany's longest-serving foreign minister, Genscher continued long into his retirement years to maintain the political contacts he forged as the Cold War was coming to an end.

At his 80th birthday, the guests marking the event in a circus tent in central Berlin included the former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and his foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze.

During his 18 years as foreign minister from 1974 to 1992 under three chancellors, Genscher travelled an estimated 2 million kilometres as part of his efforts to ease Cold War tensions.

His tactical political style was initially mocked as too accommodating to the Soviets and subservient towards the United States. But "Genscherism" had a tougher side, too.

"The success of the European Union shows that equality is a precondition for constructive cooperation," was a recurring theme in his so-called "politics of the doable."

Born in 1927 in Halle in what was to become East Germany, Genscher was first a member of the Hitler Youth and later a member of the Nazi party while serving in a ground capacity with Hitler's Luftwaffe air force towards the end of World War II.

After a spell as a prisoner of war, he studied law, fleeing to West Germany in 1952, where he practised the legal profession in the northern city of Bremen.

Election to the West German parliament came in 1965, and Genscher remained a member until his retirement in 1998.

Appointed interior minister in Willy Brandt's government in 1969, Genscher was still in that position when Palestinian terrorists targeted the 1972 Munich Olympics.

"The attack on the Israeli Olympic team was the most difficult moment of my political career," he once said.

If that was the low, the high was to come when he told thousands of cheering East Germans camped in the gardens of the German embassy in Prague on September 30, 1989, that they were free to travel to the West.

In 2014, he stood on the balcony of the Prague embassy describing the emotionally charged atmosphere as he announced the deal for travel to the west as his "happiest moment."

With his Czech counterpart Jiri Dienstbier he was later to cut through the border fence symbolically. The Berlin Wall came down just weeks later.

Then in the early 1990s he joined former chancellor Helmut Kohl in talks with former Soviet leader and communist reformer Mikhail Gorbachev that helped to set the stage for German reunification in 1990.

Three years ago, Genscher returned to the international stage by helping to broker a deal for the release of jailed Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Genscher's career was not without controversy. He had a major role in the fall of the Social Democrat chancellor Helmut Schmidt in 1982, when the Free Democrats - Genscher's party - switched its backing to the conservative Christian Democrat Helmut Kohl.

And his backing at the end of 1991 for the formal recognition of Slovenia and Croatia is seen by many as contributing to the turmoil in the Balkans over the succeeding decade.

One year later, he stepped down as foreign minister at age 65.