Henry Kissinger, a German・born American diplomat, academic and presidential adviser who served as Secretary of State for 2 presidents, died on Wednesday at 11.29 AM, aged 100.
Kissinger died Wednesday at his home in Connecticut, according to a statement released by Kissinger Associates.
Kissinger was respected, controversial, admired by supporters as a great strategist, and condemned by critics as a master manipulator.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize for pioneering the detente policy with the Soviet Union, initiating reconciliation with China, and negotiating the Paris Peace Agreement to end U.S. involvement in Vietnam in 1973.
According to his biographer, Walter Isaacson, at various points before his second marriage, Kissinger dated actresses Jill St. John, Shirley MacLaine, Marlo Thomas, Candice Bergen and Liv Ullman.
“Power,” he once famously said, “is the ultimate aphrodisiac.””
He was also a man who was used to being in charge for many years.
There can’t be a crisis next week,” he was quoted as saying in the New York Times in 1969. “My schedule is already full.”
He has maintained global influence even after leaving public life, most recently evidenced by his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 7. The Chinese leader greeted a former American diplomat who was celebrating his 100th birthday with deep respect.
“The Chinese people will never forget their old friends, and Sino・Us relations will always be linked with Henry Kissinger’s name,” Xi said at the time.
Kissinger played a leading role in normalizing U.S.・China relations under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
By 1980, he told Time magazine, “The longer I’m out of office, the more sure I will appear to myself.””
Kissinger is survived by his wife Nancy, whom he married in 1974, and 2 children from his first marriage, David and Elizabeth.
He was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger in 1923-5-27 in Fürth, Bavaria, Germany, and even as a child was known for his intelligence.
Kissinger, his brother, Walter, and his parents fled the Naz*s and arrived in New York via London when Henry was 15 in 1938.
After attending City College in New York, he served in the U.S. army and became a U.S. citizen, then enrolled at Harvard University, earning a bachelor’s and master’s degrees and a doctorate.
Kissinger later joined a Harvard faculty, became an expert in the field of international relations, and became an adviser to government agencies under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
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