An afternoon with Helmut Schmidt in Hamburg-Langenhorn - October 1983

It was raining as I walked along Neubergerweg, that quiet, almost village-like path in northern Hamburg, at the end of which stood the house where one of the most powerful men in Europe had lived for decades—and now, for a year, had ceased to govern. The chestnut trees had already lost most of their leaves, and the wind carried the scent of damp earth and decaying foliage through the neighborhood. It was a typical Hamburg October day, the kind Schmidt had known since childhood: gray, damp, and devoid of sentimentality.