Kohl’s Popularity Drops as He Marks Decade in Power : Germany: Stagnating economy, a ‘foreigner problem’ and racist violence plague the chancellor.

“He came, sat and stayed.” With ironic understatement, the cover headline on a German magazine sums up the career no one ever seemed to believe Helmut Kohl would have.

Often painted by his critics as an uncouth, inarticulate bumbler, Kohl has daunted them all by securing his place in history books as the chancellor of German unification and a leading figure in international politics.

“I’ve made a career out of being underestimated,” he is fond of saying.

As Kohl marks his 10th anniversary in office today, Germany prepares to mark an anniversary, too--of the Oct. 3, 1990, unification with formerly Communist East Germany. And neither the country nor the chancellor, it seems, is in the mood to celebrate.

Kohl’s own popularity, which reached its zenith during unification, is at a low point and sinking steadily, with even his supporters openly wondering whether he could win reelection in 1994.

A stagnating economy, rising unemployment and an overwhelming flood of asylum-seekers have put the country in an angry funk, and Kohl’s inertia on the home front belies the zeal he displays on the international stage.

A chief architect of the beleaguered Maastricht Treaty on European unity, Kohl rushed to appear on French television in an effort to sway voters there to approve the pact, which they did by a wafer-thin margin.

But even as he championed European union--something he views as imperative to keeping a powerful Germany in check--Kohl was virtually invisible at home as ugly racist violence broke out.

When he went to Rio de Janeiro for the global environmental conference, Kohl was the one everyone seemed to want for a photo opportunity. About 60 leaders from around the world sought a tete-a-tete with him--more than double the number that aides say he might have had before unification.

But on the ground in Germany, Kohl is “no baby-kisser,” a close aide acknowledges. He is unlikely to visit an eastern factory to reassure laid-off workers or to stop by a refugee center to reassure asylum-seekers under nightly attack by right-wing extremists.

“He has his job to do, and he can’t travel Germany and the world nonstop,” said government spokesman Dieter Vogel. “It makes no sense for him to go from one refugee center to another. It wouldn’t change the situation.”

With 500,000 refugees from Eastern Europe and the Third World requesting asylum already this year--and double that number expected next year--the “situation” has become critical, and coping with it is clearly the most difficult challenge Kohl now faces.

How Germany resolves the “foreigner problem,” as it is often called here, will in many ways define the new Germany itself.

Kohl’s center-right government already blundered once by suddenly announcing a year ago that the asylum-seekers would be corralled into special camps to speed up processing and deportation. (An estimated 95% of the applicants do not qualify for asylum because they cannot prove they are persecuted at home. But processing applications often takes years, and Germany by law must support the applicants during that time).

And Kohl only added fuel to the fire of criticism when he defied the international ban against Austria’s then-President Kurt Waldheim and met with the accused Nazi in Munich earlier this year. His handlers inanely sought to play down the incident by describing it as a “private meeting” between friends; Kohl himself haughtily declared that he could meet with whomever he wished.

Such insensitivity is at odds with the head-on manner with which Kohl confronts German guilt in public speeches, often asserting that history must never be allowed to repeat itself.

But more bruises to Germany’s world image seem inevitable as Bonn’s legislators wrangle over constitutional changes that would enable Germany to shut the door more swiftly and forcefully on asylum-seekers, even as their chancellor crusades for a Europe without borders.

Kohl has not said anything about his Interior Ministry’s recent announcement that 40,000 Romanians--mostly Gypsies--would be deported under an agreement with Bucharest starting Nov. 1.

Biographers say Kohl was just 12 years old when he helped dig the burned bodies of neighbors from the rubble of his Rhineland hometown, Ludwigshafen, which was heavily bombed during the war. His family was devoutly Catholic; Kohl speaks reverently of his father’s opposition to Hitler.

Now, having realized his dream of reuniting the two Germanys, Kohl finds himself under attack by critics who accuse him of acting too hastily. He admits that unification is costing much more both financially and emotionally than he imagined when he promised that the eastern region would “blossom” in just a few years.

Eastern unemployment hit 14.4% in August, with 1.16 million people out of work. In western Germany, the figure was 6%, with 1.8 million jobless. Affordable housing remains scarce, and interest rates have soared.

Germany’s internal economic angst was largely blamed for the crisis in European markets and the near-collapse of the European Community’s Exchange Rate Mechanism in recent weeks. And when Kohl told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper this week that “my expectations are far surpassed by reality,” it was unclear whether he meant it positively or negatively.

But Kohl is a proven survivor, and his earthy, Fred Flintstone manner is countered by a deceptive shrewdness, a concealed toughness and a highly refined gut-instinct for what underlies the public mood. Few politicians feel Germany’s pulse better than Kohl, and his sense of timing has made up for his lack of grace on more than one occasion.

He speaks no foreign languages--unusual for a modern German--and his grasp of his mother tongue is a delight to comedians. His suits are predictably blue, his shoes size 12 and his favorite dish is stuffed sow stomach, which he gleefully foists on guests like President Bush and former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He and his wife, Hannelore, live with a 15-year-old cat in an unfashionable suburb next to Kohl’s hometown.

“He has very close ties to his heimat (home),” said spokesman Vogel. “He believes in simple values, decency, patriotism--but not nationalism; he’s not a nationalist, he’s a European.”

His private life remains private, with neither his wife nor two sons--both U.S.-educated--quoted in the media. When his grown son Peter was seriously injured in an automobile crash in Italy this year, Kohl rushed to his side and kept vigil.

Kohl spends large chunks of his time keeping in contact with grass-roots-level officials within his Christian Democratic party, and there is said to be no important party official--from precinct to national level--who doesn’t owe him some kind of personal favor.

This dominance within his own party and the prolonged weakness of the main political opposition, the Social Democrats, have been the key to Kohl’s survival.

As a leader, his achievements before the Nov. 9, 1989, collapse of the Berlin Wall were modest. His policies helped revive German economic growth, and he faced down intense public protest against his government’s plans to allow deployment of medium-range U.S. nuclear missiles in the early 1980s.

When he flew in a helicopter over Bonn during one such protest and saw 300,000 to 400,000 demonstrators, Kohl told Welt am Sonntag he suddenly wondered: “Are they all wrong? Or are you?” He stood by his decision, though he now acknowledges that he “often felt very alone.”

That sense of isolation found its flip side in July, 1990, when the whole world, it seemed, was on Kohl’s side. During crucial negotiations with Gorbachev, Kohl swept the board clean, winning approval not just for German unification but also for Germany’s full membership in NATO and the withdrawal of all Soviet forces from East Germany.

It was perhaps his finest hour on the international stage.

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Berlin contributed to this report.