BERLIN - The wife of former German chancellor Helmut Kohl has killed herself after months of suffering from an intense allergy that kept her confined to a darkened house.
Hannelore Kohl, aged 68, developed photodermatitis after being treated with penicillin - a drug to which she was allergic - in 1993.
Her
body was discovered in the family bungalow in Oggersheim yesterday morning by the wife of Mr Kohl's chauffeur.
She had been ill and house-bound for the last 15 months, unable to attend even her son Peter's wedding in Turkey in May. She had spoken to journalists about her suffering, but not even her closest friends appeared to be aware how serious it was.
"This allergy was awful," she revealed to the newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag earlier this year. "I had inflammations all over my skin. Everything was swollen."
She recovered from that episode but about 15 months ago the illness returned with a vengeance.
Since then she had not set foot outside the twilight of her Oggersheim home.
Her body reacted violently to light, but even in darkness her skin erupted in painful, open sores. According to the farewell note she is reported to have left behind, she could take it no more.
For a few hours after her body was discovered, officials in Oggersheim insisted that she had died from "natural causes". The admission that she had taken her own life came hours later, in a statement issued by Helmut Kohl's office.
"Due to the hopelessness of her state of health, she decided voluntarily to withdraw from life," the statement declared.
- INDEPENDENT
