Franz Josef Strauss, RIP.

HAVE YOU EVER," asked the "King" of Bavaria, tried to nail a piece of jelly to the wall?"

As Franz Josef Strauss's guest at lunch in Munich, I had asked him whether he had ever tried to explain the Soviet threat to Chancellor Helmut Kohl. That answer, from the irreplaceable leader of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), was typical of the man and symptomatic of the extreme frustration he felt after his double failure: to win the federal elections in 1980, and to be given control of foreign affairs in Kohl's 1983 coalition.

Refusing another portfolio (finance and defense were on offer, and he had done both), he returned to his fief in Bavaria, to sulk in his tent. In recent years, this extraordinary man, the most gifted Bundeskanzier postwar Germany never had, amused himself (but dismayed his supporters) by demonstrating his ability to negotiate West German credits for East Germany, and by co-piloting his plane to Moscow to meet Mikhail Gorbachev.

Strauss's career was blighted by the Spiegel affair of 1962, now known to have been a highly successful KGB ploy designed to force Strauss to quit as Dr. Adenauer's defense minister. History decreed that his exceptional talents would never reach full fruition.