BERLIN - Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl is dating a woman 34 years his junior, the German press revealed on Sunday.
Maike Richter, 41, works at the German economics ministry and got to know 75-year-old Kohl when she helped him write his memoirs, Bild am Sonntag reported.
The newspaper described Richter as "a quick thinker with a good sense of humour".
The former chancellor confirmed he was in a new relationship but declined to comment further.
His new partner is the same age as the fourth wife of 61-year-old Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Doris Schroeder-Koepf.
Kohl has found new happiness four years after the suicide of his first wife, Hannelore, who took an overdose of sleeping pills after years of suffering from what she claimed was a very rare allergy to sunlight.
Kohl, the former leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) was German chancellor from 1982 to 1998 and oversaw the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of West Germany and communist East Germany a year later.
04/24/2005 13:28 GMT