Former German leader Gerhard Schröder receives treatment after showing signs of burnout

BERLIN — Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who has faced heavy criticism in recent years for his ties with Russia, is receiving treatment in a hospital after showing signs of severe burnout, German news agency dpa reported Tuesday.

The 80-year-old Schröder led Germany from 1998 to 2005. He was the leader of current Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democratic Party from 1999 to 2004.

But his involvement with Russian state-owned energy companies and his reluctance after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine to distance himself wholeheartedly from Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he has long had a friendly relationship, estranged him from the German political establishment.

On Tuesday, dpa cited a doctor's assessment that Schröder is ''suffering from severe burnout syndrome with the typical signs of profound exhaustion and a pronounced lack of energy," coupled with ''concentration and memory difficulties as well as sleep problems."

It reported that Schröder's lawyer, Hans-Peter Huber, confirmed he had gone into clinical treatment on the advice of the doctor.

The World Health Organization describes burnout as ''a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.''

Schröder was supposed to be questioned last month by a parliamentary commission of inquiry in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania into the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, whose board of directors he headed. But he didn't appear because of illness.

Nord Stream 2 never went into service and was damaged in underwater explosions in the Baltic Sea in September 2022.