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Wolfgang Schäuble (born September 18 1942 in Freiburg im Breisgau) is a German politician. He is a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). After holding numerous posts in Helmut Kohl's cabinet he served as Chairman of the CDU (1998–2000). In 1990 Schäuble was seriously injured in an assassination attempt. He survived, but was paralysed from the waist down. Between 1989 and 1991 he served as Kohl's Minister of the Interior. By the mid-1990s Kohl was publicly endorsing Schäuble as his eventual successor, which helped reinforce a widely held view of Schäuble as a "Chancellor-in-waiting".
After the CDU's defeat to Gerhard Schröder's SPD in the 1998 election, Schäuble succeeded Kohl as Chairman of the party, but resigned after the CDU found itself embroiled in a massive party financing scandal. He was succeeded by Angela Merkel.
Since the 2005 federal elections, there have been talks of Schäuble returning to the mainstream political fold, either as part of the cabinet or as Horst Köhler's eventual successor as President of Germany.
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