President who pioneered Moscow ties dies aged 97

Scheel, who led a pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), served as foreign minister in Willy Brandt’s centre-left confederation from 1969 to 1974, a period during that he spearheaded pivotal agreements with a Eastern bloc.

President Joachim Gauck paid reverence to Scheel, who he pronounced “helped shape the destiny of a nation for many years in a special way”.

“He done a durability grant to bargain and settlement on our continent,” pronounced Gauck.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier described Scheel as “one of the pioneers of Germany’s Ostpolitik.”

“The treaties negotiated by Walter Scheel, including with a Soviet Union and Poland as good as other Eastern confederation agreements, were ancestral landmarks of a process of detente that led to German reunification and finished the division of Europe,” he pronounced in a statement.

Born Jul 8th 1919 in a western city of Solingen, Scheel served as chancellor for 9 days in 1974 after Brandt’s abdication in a spying scandal.

He was inaugurated as boss after that year, a post that he hold until 1979.