Even though I certainly did not always agree with his opinions and stance, with the death of Johannes Rau a significant part of NRW political history comes to an end.
After all, the man shaped a large part of my conscious engagement with politics - most of that time as the Minister President of NRW. He will definitely be missed - even if he was sometimes a rather conservative hardliner, and his sermons were annoying on more than one occasion. Somehow, he still belonged to NRW.