The crisis in Germany's Christian Democrat Party over illegal contributions has deepened to the point where the party's credibility and performance have been gravely impaired. Dr Helmut Kohl's refusal to disclose the source of funds he received has become a point of honour for him - and also a symbol of the iron control he exercised over the party's apparatus for a generation as its leader and fifteen years in power as chancellor.
Although he has not been accused of personal corruption, the affair has clearly become a cathartic encounter with his position and reputation within the Christian Democrats and in Germany at large. It is typical of the man to have assumed it would probably recede in importance if he simply refused to co-operate. As it has happened, his stubbornness has rebounded on him and given his political opponents much room to take party advantage. As for his party colleagues, most notably his successor as leader, Mr Wolfgang Schauble, the affair has piled disaster on disaster. The revelation that he too was in receipt of illegal donations is widely assumed to have come after none-too-subtle pressure from Dr Kohl. Mr Schauble will be fortunate to remain on as party chairman in the circumstances.
On the wider political plane, the affair has given a boost to Mr Gerhard Scroder's Social Democrat-Green federal coalition government, which for much of last year looked vulnerable following a string of defeats in lander elections, the defection of leading personnel and policy disarray. Coinciding with the Christian Democrat travails, Mr Schroder has successfully consolidated his leadership and brokered several major initiatives on taxation and public expenditure savings that have broken the log-jam in his party ranks and received very favourable media attention. The combination of these events suddenly makes his coalition more stable and more likely to win the next lander and federal elections.
Such are the ironies of politics. It was Dr Kohl's great strength as a leader to press on with major projects by trusting his own judgment and disregarding opposition, confident that eventually it would shift as circumstances changed. So it was with German unification and the launch of the euro - both of which were highly contentious among the German electorate.
It is for these achievements that he will be remembered. But his unsavoury reputation as a ruthless party boss with such a detailed knowledge of the apparatus and loyal place-men within it, has been fully exposed by this crisis. He has continued to be actively involved in the party's affairs after his resignation, not unlike his longstanding antagonist, Mrs Margaret Thatcher, in the British Conservative Party.
It is all too easy to draw the moral that when political leaders resign they ought to do so comprehensively. That may be desirable but is often unrealistic. Dr Kohl has been quite unwilling to sacrifice his personal honour for the sake of his party's reputation and will leave it in a much weaker state as a result.