The French President flatters the Germans and proves courage in his speech in the Bundestag to pathos. Germany and France should not let the world „fall into chaos“.
Emmanuel Macron prepares a moving closing point in his speech on Sunday afternoon in the German Bundestag with a short story about two soldiers in the First World War. It is the story of the poet Ernst Stadler, who was said to have recognized a French poet at the front in the summer of 1918, whose works he had translated into German. Then he wrote him a message, apparently in German, which the Frenchman did not understand. Nevertheless, Macron says, he is said to have written Stadler back in French: „My dear German, I do not understand you, but I love you.“ The President will inimitably transfer the spirit of this story to the present at the end of his speech.
Celebration of the Memorial Day in the Bundestag. This date is a little bit two Sundays before the first Advent, with which Germany officially recognizes the victims of war and tyranny, and has been sidelined in the past few years. There are so many memorial days, the Germans have gotten into their history. But in 2018, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, once inspector general of the Bundeswehr and today president of the Volksbund Kriegsgräberfürsorge, can welcome the French president as host of the ceremony, 100 years after the end of the First World War. Macron is „a collaborator“ for the European cause, says Schneiderhan, „who is ready with courage and ideas to go ahead“.
Before the French president in his speech goes above all with courage to pathos, Schneiderhan can even present a project of concrete remembrance work. Young footballers from clubs in Germany, England, France and Belgium have researched together the biographies of footballers from their clubs who fell in the First World War. They each wrote a letter to the dead and visited their graves – young men who, like the players today, dreamed of successes and the national team, but did not play for their countries, but were only allowed to die.
„We have,“ says Linus Gechter of Hertha BSC Berlin, „visited cemeteries in France and Belgium, which together have more deaths than guests fit into our stadium.“ And the young Belgian Alexander Vandeperre, who plays for Bruges today, commemorates two brothers of the local rivals Cercle Bruges: „We will always remember you as friends Tears know no color.“
