And on September 24th a court was due to rule on one of the most divisive issues in Indian politics: the ownership of a disputed site in the northern city of Ayodhya, where in 1992, Hindu zealots demolished a mosque built on the reputed site of a temple marking the birthplace of the god Ram.
But he is little known in France and what is known about him, as a Protestant from Hanover, in Germany's north, and as areputed Anglophile, makes him seem worryingly different from Mr Kohl, a Catholic Francophile from the nearby Rhineland.