Former chancellor Helmut Schmidt guided West Germany through some of the toughest moments of the Codl War and economic turbulence. Thousands lined the streets of Hamburg on Monday to pay tribute to the great statesman who died two weeks ago, aged 96. People watched solemnly as his casket, draped in a German flag, was driven from the city’s St. Michaelis church to the Ohlsdorf cemetery where he will rest forevermore at his family’s plot.

On the national scene, he will be remembered as the statesman who called in the military to help during the sever flooding in 1962, a move that overstepped his legal authority but that helped prevent a worse disaster.

Current German Chancellor Angela Merkel says schmidt is the leader who did what he believed was right, no matter what the political consequences.  “He was prepared himself to pay the highest price,” she told some 1,800 guests at the church for Schmidt’s funeral

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger remembered Schmidt as a “special friend.”