From foes to friends
September 22, 2012
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her French counterpart Francois Hollande attended a ceremony in the southwestern city of Ludwigsburg on Saturday, marking 50 years since one of the most famous speeches in Franco-German history.
Some 650 guests are in attendence, with Baden-Württemberg's state premier Winfried Kretschmann saying before the event that the organizers "hope to throw a party for all citizens from both countries."
The ceremony remembers French military and political leader Charles de Gaulle's emotional speech, delivered in German, to a crowd of young Germans in Ludwigsburg in 1962. The speech is remembered as the start of a new, friendlier post-war chapter of Franco-German relations - made all the more poignant as it was fierce French wartime leader de Gaulle who delivered the message.
The 71-year-old de Gaulle congratulated his audience "first and foremost, for being young," in his optimistic address that went on to examine the new challenges of the modern age - before expressing a position that would have been unthinkable 20 years earlier.
That's right, a great people!
"I congratulate you, also, for being young Germans, which means you are children of a great people. That's right, a great people! Which has also made some great mistakes in the course of its history," de Gaulle said in his slow, measured German.
This commendation of Germany was particularly significant coming from de Gaulle's mouth. He was the firebrand leader of the French resistance, the only top general never to accept the terms of France's June 1940 armistice to Nazi Germany in the Second World War, the leader of the Free French Forces resistance army, and the politician least inclined to merciful treatment of Germany after Hitler's defeat. It was a sign of the changing times that the quintessential French fighter showed such readiness for a new dawn.
A few months later, in January 1963, de Gaulle and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer signed the Elysee Treaty or Treaty of Friendship, a document securing closer cooperation on a number of political and civic levels.
Merkel and Hollande will also take time on Saturday to discuss current topics like the eurozone's modern-day debt difficulties during a working lunch on the sidelines of the commemorative event.
msh/mr (AFP, dpa)