06/05/2009

Obama in Germany

Symbols of the Past Amid Talk of the Future

US President Barack Obama's visit to Germany is short, but it is packed full of symbolism. After leaving the historic center of Dresden, a city nearly destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II, he is to visit the former concentration camp at Buchenwald.

US President Barack Obama's 24 hours in Germany are marked by a string of symbolic gestures devoted to wars past and present. The US president held talks with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Friday morning in Dresden, the eastern German city almost completely destroyed by Allied bombing in World War II. He then visited the restored Frauenkirche before leaving for Buchenwald, a former concentration camp. He will then make his way to the Landstuhl military hospital to visit with US troops injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Obama arrived in Dresden on Thursday night after giving his speech on relations with the Middle East in Cairo, Egypt. Early on Friday morning Obama arrived at the historic Dresden Castle, a pearl of Baroque architecture that houses a number of outstanding museums, to hold talks with Merkel. Obama signed the city's guest book in an ornate room, writing "Greetings from the people of the United States!," and then departed for an hour of private talks with the chancellor. The two leaders discussed the economic crisis, the ongoing tensions with Iran and North Korea over their nuclear program, policy toward Russia, the carmaker Opel and the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

However, Obama did not ask Merkel to make any firm commitment to take inmates from the US military prison in Guantanamo, Cuba. Speaking at a joint press conference after the talks, Obama said that the issue of what to do with the inmates would not be resolved in the next two to three months. "It will take longer."

Obama also said that the US was ready to engage in "serious dialogue" with Iran and that the moment had come to work toward peace in the Middle East. "We must avoid a nuclear arms race in the Middle East," he said.

Merkel, for her part, praised Obama's Cairo speech, saying it "can be the point of departure for many political activities" regarding the Middle East peace process.

The US president was to follow the talks with a visit the Frauenkirche, an imposing church in the city's historic center, almost completely destroyed during the wartime bombing which was restored between 1994 and 2005, partly with donations from the United States. The bombing of Dresden began on the night of Feb. 13, 1945 with first British and then US bombers pounding the city on the Elbe River, a largely non-strategic target, igniting a firestorm that killed 25,000 people.

After leaving Dresden, Obama and Merkel will fly by helicopter to Buchenwald, the former Nazi forced-labor camp near the city of Weimar, where an estimated 56,000 people died. The president has a personal connection to the camp, his great-uncle Charles Payne helped liberate the Ohrduf subcamp of Buchenwald in April 1945. In a recent interview with SPIEGEL Payne explained his feelings when arriving at the camp. "I was horrified by the lengths to which men will go to mistreat other men. This was, to me, almost unbelievable."

While Ohrduf no longer exists, the Buchenwald camp has been kept as memorial. Obama and Merkel will be accompanied by Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. Wiesel, now 80 years old, was an inmate of Buchenwald from January 1945 until the camp was liberated in April of the same year.

Obama will finish off his whirlwind trip by heading for the Landstuhl military hospital where he will have private visits with US troops who are recovering from wounds sustained in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He will then leave for Paris to meet with his wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha. On Saturday Obama with join French President Nicolas Sarkozy to commemorate the D-Day Allied landings along the beaches of Normandy.

During his brief trip to Germany, Merkel is expected to invite Obama to return in November to attend a ceremony to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, any official invitation would need to be made by the German President Horst Köhler.

This may be a way for Merkel to make amends for refusing to allow Obama to make a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in July 2008 when he was still only a presidential candidate. He instead had to make do with the Victory Column in the central Tiergarten park, where he addressed an audience of over 200,000 people.

Article...

For reasons of data protection and privacy, your IP address will only be stored if you are a registered user of Facebook and you are currently logged in to the service. For more detailed information, please click on the "i" symbol.

Post to other social networks: