The funeral of Wolfgang Schäuble, who died at the age of 81 after a long battle with cancer, will be held today in Offenburg.

According to Bild, former Chancellor Angela Merkel will not attend. She announced that she will only be present at the ceremony to be held in his memory in Berlin on January 22.

The funeral procession from Evangelical City Church to Waldbach Cemetery will take place at 1 p.m. In the green cemetery in the center of Offenburg, built in 1871, Wolfgang Schäuble will be buried at 2 p.m., surrounded only by his family and honored guests.

According to information from BILD, leading politicians will be today at the side of the Schäuble family in Offenburg.

CDU leader Friedrich Merz, Manuel Hagel, Baden-Württemberg Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann, Offenburg mayor Marco Steffens and Schäuble’s eldest daughter Christine Strobl will deliver eulogies.

Schäuble was from 1965 a member of the center-right Christian Democrats and became an MP in 1972. He was one of the longest serving German politicians.

He has been confined to a wheelchair since 1990 after the bullets of an unbalanced gunman crippled and almost killed him.

Wolfgang Schäuble, who came from Freiburg, he was considered one of the most prominent politicians of the Christian Democratic Party of Germany, CDU. He shaped federal policy for decades and was the longest-serving member of the Bundestag.

In particular, the former German finance minister has held government positions since the 1980s, including Federal Minister for Special Duties, Head of the Federal Chancellery and Minister of the Interior under Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

Under Angela Merkel, Schäuble was again interior minister from 2005 to 2009 and finance minister from 2009 to 2017, a post for which he became known beyond Germany during the euro crisis.

Between 1991 and 2000, he held the position of chairman of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group in the Bundestag for the Union.

After the collapse of the Christian Democratic Union in the 1998 federal election, Schäuble succeeded Helmut Kohl and became the party’s chairman. Just 15 months later, he resigned from the position and leadership of the Christian Democratic Union caucus in 2000 following the party’s funding scandal. Schäuble’s resignation started a change within the Christian Democrats, with Angela Merkel taking over as party leader.