Festive Gala Marked Richard von Weizsäcker’s 90th Birthday
Konzerthaus Berlin, 26 April 2010
(Photo: Marc Darchinger)
On the occasion of his 90th birthday former German President Richard von Weizsäcker, who has been chairman of the Bergedorf Round Table since 1995, was honoured by the Körber Foundation in the Small Hall of Konzerthaus Berlin on Gendarmenmarkt.
After some words of welcome from Klaus Wehmeier, the deputy chairman of the Körber Foundation, former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt gave a laudatory address in which he noted a resemblance between Weizsäcker and Kurt A. Körber. In different ways they both embodied the notion of the “desirable citizen” who devotes his energies to the well-being of the society in which he lives. He went on to praise Weizsäcker’s contribution to the predictability of German foreign and security policy from the 1950s onwards. Weizsäcker had clung unwaveringly to his idea of foreign policy, which was to reach out to the countries to the east of Germany. For example, he had encouraged many members of the CDU and CSU parties to abstain in the crucial votes which made it possible to ratify the treaties with the countries of eastern Europe. As a result of his political career he had become “a symbol of Germany stability.” Schmidt also praised Weizsäcker’s speech marking the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War on 8 May 1945. It had had a “profound effect on the soul of a whole nation.” Weizsäcker was the first person to convince the vast majority of his countrymen that the German defeat in 1945 had in essence been an act of liberation.
After the laudatory address, members of the Staatskapelle Berlin conducted by maestro Daniel Barenboim gave a performance of Richard Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll,” which was composed in 1870.
(Photo: Marc Darchinger)
In the second half of the festive gala the jubilarian talked about “War and Peace – Lessons from the 20th Century” with Václav Havel, the former President of the Czech Republic, Henry Kissinger, the former US Secretary of State, and the former Polish Ambassador to Berlin and Washington, D.C. Janusz Reiter. The discussion was moderated by the historian Timothy Garton Ash.
Kissinger thanked Weizsäcker for supporting “reconciliation with readversaries”. He considered him to be a “symbol of decency and commitment to fundamental values.” Reiter emphasized the fact that Weizsäcker had helped many Poles to edge towards and to begin to trust Germany.
Timothy Garton Ash suggested that the four prime movers of European integration–the experience of war, the Soviet threat, US support and Germany’s view of its role in the EU, which had been moulded by a sense of historical responsibility–were now dramatically weaker than in the past. Weizsäcker believed that there was an element of truth in this assertion. Nowadays Germany behaved very much like France or Britain in the EU, and for this reason was less of an engine of integration than in the past. He thought that Germany ought to go back to supporting the EU. Reiter called for the restoration of a “balance of trust” in Europe. However, Kissinger pointed out that the US could no longer make a contribution either to the creation of such a balance or to the resolution of Europe’s internal problems.
(Photo: Marc Darchinger)
Moreover, Kissinger called on Europe to play a greater role internationally, and pointed out that the greatest international challenge was to create a world order which every state perceived to be just, and in which no one would be interested in trying to change the status quo. Thus Iran should not be stopped from becoming a strong nation. Yet the possession of nuclear weapons or dominance over the Middle East were unacceptable Iranian policy goals.
Havel thought that Europe was “responsible for the whole world” and that it should give proactive support to the democracy movement in Iran. He was not a pacifist, and there were situations in which the use of force could not be excluded. In this connection Reiter pointed out that on the one hand the European states had become used to resolving their differences in a peaceful manner, but on the other hand they lived in a world in which the use of force was widespread. This was the greatest challenge facing modern Europe. Weizsäcker called for more intense negotiations with Iran. They were both “necessary and possible.”
Among the 400 invited guests from the political, business and cultural communities were former German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, German ministers Annette Schavan and Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, and the federal state prime ministers Wolfgang Böhmer and Stanislaw Tillich.
