IRNA – Sudden death of Ayatollah Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani has reverberated across the major German media with almost all of them praising the man and covering the high turnout of the Iranian people who had come to see off the late Ayatollah.

In the wake of Ayatollah Rafsanjani's death on Sunday as a result of a heart attack at a Tehran hospital, German media also joined the ranks of their international peers to praise the key role he played during the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

German weekly Der Spiegel described Rafsanjani as an architect of the Revolution and a pragmatic leader who as the head of the Expediency Council played the role of a mediator between the Iranian Parliament and the Guardian Council to settle the issues.

German public broadcasting radio station, Deutschlandfunk, described Rafsanjani as a President who during his tenure from 1989 to 1997, helped end Iran's international isolation by defending normalization of ties with other countries.

Public-service television Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF), on the other hand, said that Rafsanjani as the main player of the Islamic Revolution was one of the most persistent Iranian politicians who until the end of his life maintained his stance as the most influential politicians in the country.

German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) portrayed the Iranian revolutionary as the leader and mastermind of the Islamic Revolution in Iran who tended to be at the top during most parts of his political career.

German newspaper the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung was also among media in the European nation that covered the news on Rafsanjani's death.

There were many ups and downs in his political life, the daily wrote.

Following his election as Iran's President in 1989, Rafsanjani opened up the country's political atmosphere, it added.

While national daily newspaper Die Welt said that Rafsanjani's role in the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution was crucial, daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel wrote that with Rafsanjani's death one of the last founders of the Islamic Republic in Iran has left the political scene in the country.

And finally, German television news channel n-tv covering a full report on death of the senior cleric, said that Rafsanjani's death has brought a great sorrow to Iranian Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.