German finance minister wolfgang schaeuble news

Wolfgang Schaeuble, who helped negotiate German reunification in and was later influential in steering Europe through the debt crisis, has died at

Mr Schaeuble died at home on Tuesday evening, his family told German news agency dpa on Wednesday.

He took the job as former chancellor Angela Merkel's finance minister in , just before revelations about Greece's ballooning budget deficit sparked the debt crisis.

He pulled the strings of Germany's policy response, securing support on the right of Ms Merkel's conservative bloc for three Greek bailouts.

After eight years as finance minister, Mr Schaeuble cemented his status as an elder statesman by becoming the German parliament's speaker.

A member of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU), he had been a member of parliament without interruption since

At the time of his death, he was the country's longest-serving lawmaker.

Mr Schaeuble was shot at during an elect