RAINER BARZEL was a prominent Christian Democratic Union (CDU) politician in the early days of Germany’s postwar democracy.

He came nearest to real power in 1972, when he moved a vote of no confidence in the Bundestag against Federal Chancellor Willy Brandt over his policy of reconciliation with the Soviet Union, the communist countries of Central Europe and the German Democratic Republic. He lost by two votes, and many years later won hollow consolation when Markus Wolf, the communist East German spy king, revealed that he had bribed two conservative members of the Bundestag to vote against Barzel’s motion and so save Brandt’s skin.

Barzel fought on, but he had missed the tide. Many years later, when he was Speaker of the Bundestag, he was damagingly implicated in a messy political and financial scandal.

Rainer Candidus Barzel was born into a teacher’s family in 1924, in what was then East Prussia. He grew up in Berlin, was educated first at a Jesuit grammar school and then, when Hitler put an end to confessional education, at a state school in the city.

Like all his generation he was a member of the Hitler Youth; he volunteered for the Luftwaffe and saw active service over Norway and the Black Sea. He reached the end of the war with an Iron Cross.

In 1945 he started to study law at Cologne University and enrolled in the revived Catholic Centre Party. A few years later Barzel joined the CDU which, with the CSU, its Bavarian partner, dominated the political scene in the emerging Federal Republic. As a promising young lawyer he joined the civil service of North Rhine Westphalia and soon caught the eye of his political superiors, becoming a member of the Bundestag in 1957. He made a powerful impression there as a debater, but with his fiery, scathing style he made enemies too.

When in 1966 he put himself forward to lead his party, he came a poor third. But by 1971 he was elected chairman of the CDU and soon afterwards as the CDU-CSU chancellor candidate.

Meanwhile, Brandt had launched his Ostpolitik, his policy of seeking openings to Moscow, East Berlin and Germany’s eastern neighbours. The CDU was suspicious that he was going soft on communism or, at the very least, putting West Germany’s place in the western alliance at risk. It also saw a political opportunity to drive Brandt from power.

Brandt was undeterred, and kept the sustained if cautious support of Britain, France and, most importantly, the United States. In 1971-72 he negotiated treaties with Moscow and Warsaw and in April 1972 submitted them for ratification.

Barzel thought he saw an opportunity to bring Brandt down. He argued that he favoured the improvement of Germany’s relations with its eastern neighbours but was opposed to anything that might prejudice an eventual peace settlement between Germany and the four occupying powers, which alone could settle the country’s final frontiers. He also argued that in his negotiations with the GDR Brandt had secured insufficient improvements to the living conditions of East Germans. Many voters regarded Barzel as a staunch defender of Germany’s interests, while others detected the old Adam who would not accept the facts apparent from Hitler’s aggressive war and eventual defeat.

Barzel took his campaign to a vote and lost — the vote that Wolf, 20 years later, claimed he had manipulated. In the same year he led his coalition partners into a general election against Brandt, and lost again.

It was only the rise of Helmut Kohl, nine years Barzel’s junior, that in 1982 brought the CDU back to power. Barzel served for a year in the consequential but secondary post of Minister for Inter-German Relations and then for a further year as President of the Bundestag.

In 1984 Barzel was caught up in the unsavoury business known as the Flick affair, a scandal involving secret payments made to leading politicans and their parties by one of the country’s major industrial concerns. Barzel tried to tough things out in the Bundestag, withdrawing from some sittings but remaining for others, before finally standing down. Although an inquiry found no proof of his involvement, the case did lasting political and personal damage.

This marked the virtual end of Barzel’s political career, though he remained attuned to political issues. On one occasion he denounced what he perceived as Kohl’s weakness in countering a wave of sinister racist attacks which marred the face of the new, united and democratic Germany.

Rainer Barzel, German politician, was born on June 20, 1924. He died on August 26, 2006, aged 82.