Their roles may be largely ceremonial and their handshake on the "Bridge of Peace" linking the towns of Frankfurt an der Oder in Germany and Slubice in Poland might be disparaged by cynics as a mere photo op, but the meeting between German President Johannes Rau and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski on Wednesday morning signals the beginning of substantial talks on future relations and the role of Poland in an increasingly politically and economically integrated Europe.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder heads for Warsaw on Friday for two days of discussions with Polish Prime Minister Jerzy Busek where the focus is expected to be on strengthening economic ties and Germany's campaign within the European Union to allow Poland into the club.
"The twentieth century was a century of wars," Rau said at a ceremony in the port city of Gdansk, once known by its German name, Danzig, and he voiced his hope that the twenty-first would be a century of peace. Sirens sounded at 12 noon in memory of those who fell to the Nazi blitzkrieg launched by Hitler before dawn on September 1, 1939. In his speech, Rau also called for a resolution in the stalled negotiations for an agreement on the amount German industry is to pay as compensation for surviving Holocaust victims and those forced to work for the Nazis during World War II.
Rau was the first German head of state to take part in the annual commemorative ceremony in Gdansk, and it is significant that he was greeted with military honors, but for sheer emotional weight, the visit could hardly match West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's groundbreaking trip to Poland in 1970. The first chancellor to cross the border into Poland since the end of the war, Brandt burned an indelible image in the minds of all Germans and Poles as he walked up the steps to a monument for victims of a ghetto uprising in Warsaw. Overcome by the magnitude of all the monument represented, Brandt slowly fell to his knees. That image became one of the most hotly debated in postwar German history, particularly as Brandt pursued his controversial Ostpolitik, reversing the exclusively West-oriented policy established by Germany's first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer.
Two days after Germany's invasion of Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. Six million Poles, most of them civilians and half of them Jews, died in World War II. And yet, as Josef Joffe writes in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", "Germany, at least West Germany, recovered faster than you could say, 'economic miracle'," while Poland was caught behind the Iron Curtain. But it was in the shipyards of Gdansk that that curtain began to unravel. As Kwasniewski tells "Der Tagesspiegel" in an interview, "Without the uprising in Poland, German unification wouldn't have been achieved to this day."
When he travels to Poland this weekend, Schröder will no doubt have in mind that among the reasons Germany has moved its capital to Berlin are its often stated intentions to turn its attention to eastern and central Europe.
Germany and Europe on the Web today:
"'You notice it in the hotels, in the restaurants, in the shops, and on the street,' says Ernst Welteke, who will take over as president of the German Bundesbank on Sept. 1. 'Frankfurt is booming.'" Hence the title of the cover story in this week's international edition of "Business Week", "Booming Frankfurt": "Frankfurt has been in the money business at least since 1585, when a currency exchange was founded there... Now, locals boast that no other European city except London is more unabashedly capitalist or willing to embrace technology and globalization."
Haig Simonian has another fine piece in the "Financial Times" explaining how neofascist groups in former East Germany could dramatically tilt the balance of power in all of Germany: "The far right is tapping three highly emotive local issues. Xenophobia - though there are far fewer foreigners in this part of Germany than in the west; unemployment; and a general sense of discrimination felt by many east Germans." Also in the "FT": Simonian on Schröder's insistence that there is "'no alternative' to the unpopular spending and pensions reforms planned by his government"; Tony Barber and Peter Norman on Schröder's intention to use the euro as a platform for European political union; and Ralph Atkins on the merger of Viag and Veba, two German energy conglomerates. Free registration required
Elizabeth Weinstein in the "Prague Post": "US lawyers are reassuring Czech Holocaust survivors they will receive compensation equal to their Western counterparts, despite a controversial plan weighted to reflect differing costs of living in Europe."
Sam Kiley in the London "Times": "Austrian banks 'siphoned Holocaust cash'." Also in the "Times": Fiona Fleck with the latest on the Swiss spy scandal and Charles Bremner on French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin's middle class tax cuts, which Jospin insists have nothing to do with the Blair/Schröder approach, and the French farmers' ongoing war against McDonald's and all it represents.
More on Berlin's last weekend at "Wired News" (see Monday's "Digest "): "BerlinBeta wa nts to create a network where the cyberpunk can dance with the banker." Ayla Jean Yackley reports on Berlin's "other" multimedia extravaganza, the first being IFA, the sprawling trade fair, from which she reports on Wednesday. And Steve Kettmann follows up on his coverage of the Hemp Parade.
"Would Americans consider shaving 100 feet off the small island on which the Statue of Liberty stands in New York Harbor to make a foreign power feel better about security? Or maybe trimming the Washington Mall? Not likely." Steve Kettmann again, this time with Guy Raz in "Salon", reporting on the controversy surrounding the "ugly American embassy" in Berlin.
"In an extraordinarily charged setting beneath the hill where Buch enwald once disgorged its daily horror, Zubin Mehta conducted more than 170 musicians from the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Israeli Philharmonic just hours after accompanying many of them on a visit Sunday to the former Nazi camp." As if this event weren't remarkable enough, as Roger Cohen reports in the "New York Times", Berlin State Opera director Daniel Barenboim is hoping to extend the lessons learned about the reconciling power of music to the conflict between Arabs and Jews. Free registration required
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