BERLIN - Hannelore Kohl, wife of former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, committed suicide at the family's home in the western city of Ludwigshafen, her husband's office said Thursday. She was 68.

Kohl's wife had been suffering for seven years from a painful allergy that virtually kept her a prisoner indoors. Due to the hopelessness of her health situation, she decided to end her life of her own free will, the statement from Kohl's office said.

She conveyed this decision in farewell letters to her husband, her sons and friends.

The Rhineland-Palatinate state interior ministry said earlier that her body had been found Thursday.

Hannelore Kohl had suffered for seven years from a painful sunlight allergy that forced her to spend the last 15 months of her life at the family's home without any daylight, the statement said. She was also taking strong painkillers, it said.

Doctors in Germany and abroad failed to alleviate the extremely rare ailment, the statement said.

Hannelore Kohl, who married the future chancellor in 1960, stood firmly by her husband's side during his long political career - through his time as chancellor from 1982 to 1998 and during a slush fund scandal that enveloped him after he was voted out of office.

One of her goals was keeping herself and the couple's two sons out of the public spotlight as her husband rose through the ranks in postwar West Germany's conservative Christian Democratic party, taking over as leader in 1973.

Trained as a language interpreter, she led a charity for helping accident victims, the Hannelore Kohl Foundation. A few years ago, she authored a cookbook with her husband that extolled the heavy German fare he loves.

With her coifed blonde hair and blazers, she was a trim and elegant presence at Kohl's side - both at receptions and relaxing on their annual jaunt to an Alpine Austrian lake. But since his election defeat she had virtually disappeared from public view.

In May, she was so ill that she had to skip the wedding of her son Peter to his Turkish fiancee in Istanbul. But she won lavish praise in Turkey for supporting her son's choice of wife.

For many Turks, the wedding brought a symbolic olive branch from an old opponent. During 16 years in power, Helmut Kohl was seen in Turkey as one of the main obstacles to Turkey's efforts to join the European Union.

Hannelore Kohl's allergy was triggered by a penicillin treatment in 1993. She acknowledged it was untreatable, and her condition worsened last year.

In a recent interview with the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, she said she was staying fit by swimming and walking. She expressed sadness that the couple's Berlin apartment was too bright for her to spend much time there.

Helmut Kohl retained his seat in parliament after being voted out as chancellor and split his time between his native Rhine River region and the capital.

Hannelore Kohl was born March 7, 1933 in Berlin, the daughter of an engineer from Rhineland-Palatinate. She grew up in the eastern city of Leipzig and lived there until the end of the Second World War in 1945, when the family moved west.