The coffin of former German chancellor Helmut Kohl was seen off on Saturday with military honours outside the Speyer Cathedral before it headed off to his last resting place at a nearby cemetery.

World leaders past and present attended the military service before the coffin was put into a hearse and driven through the streets of Speyer to the cemetery where Kohl was laid to rest. The family requested no media were present at the cemetery.

Kohl’s casket was flown by helicopter across the Rhine from Strasbourg to his hometown of Ludwigshafen, where his body was later carried in procession before being transported by riverboat to nearby Speyer.

The resting place of many rulers of the Holy Roman Empire, itself a Europe-spanning polity, Speyer Cathedral was seen by Kohl as a symbol of European unity, a place he showed to contemporary leaders including Gorbachev and Britain’s Margaret Thatcher.