What President Obama saw from his vantage point at the Brandenburg Gate:
2008: 200,000
2113: 4,000
A 98% decline in turnout.
By Vanessa Fuhrmans
BERLIN—Five years after President Barack Obama's
last rock-star visit to Berlin, Germans embraced him like an old friend
who hasn't called in a while: still with heartfelt warmth, but with
questions about what he's been up to.
Sasha Quodt, a longtime Berlin resident, was one of the estimated 200,000 people who thronged in 2008 to hear Mr. Obama, then a presidential candidate, speak at the Victory Column in the heart of Berlin.
At the time, surrounded by a euphoric
crowd, "I was so happy to see a black man could become an American
president and someone so different from [President George W.] Bush," he
said.
But on Wednesday, blocks from the
Brandenburg Gate where Mr. Obama was speaking this time, Mr. Quodt said
he wasn't sure he'd bother going, even if the invitation-only speech had
been open to the broader public.
"I still think he's a good guy; he's
such an interesting person," Mr. Quodt said. But he said he was bothered
by the president's unfulfilled pledges, such as to close the prison
camp at Guantanamo Bay, and recent revelations about the scale of the
U.S. National Security Agency's Internet surveillance program "were the
absolute kicker."
Like Mr. Quodt, much of Berlin greeted Mr. Obama and his family with a mix of excitement and sobered expectations.
"Rock star with a fool's license," Die
Welt daily said of Germans' "hero-worshiping" of the president, despite
widely unpopular U.S. policies here such as drone attacks and
Guantanamo.
Like many media outlets, it provided
an hour-by-hour itinerary of the Obamas' goings-on in the capital and a
live ticker feed online.
Updates included Michelle Obama and her daughters' midday visit to a section of the Berlin Wall with Chancellor Angela Merkel's husband, Joachim Sauer, and the meat dumplings on the Obamas' dinner menu that evening at the Charlottenburg Palace.
On the streets in Berlin's city center, residents expressed less infatuation.
Ingrid Stockhecke, a 58-year-old government ministry
worker, said she had wanted to participate in an Amnesty International
demonstration at Potsdamer Platz against the failure to close the
Guantanamo prison but had been unable to steal away from work. There,
protesters dressed in orange prison jumpsuits chanted near the
Ritz-Carlton where the Obamas and their entourage spent the night, "Yes
you can! Close Guantanamo!"
"I was also enthusiastic about Obama,"
Ms. Stockhecke said, but "this is something that really matters to me."
Looking back to Mr. Obama's electrifying visit to Berlin as a candidate
five years ago, she added, "it was clear that someone put so high on a
pedestal would have to fall to where he is now just a normal person."
Berlin's fondness for Mr. Obama stems
partly from an emotionally loaded history of U.S. presidential visits to
the once-divided capital—not least because they reinforced a self-image
of grit and determination during the throngs of the Cold War. President
John F. Kennedy, in his famous proclamation, "Ich bin ein Berliner," 50
years ago this month, praised (West) Berlin residents for being beacons
of freedom and pledged American solidarity with them. President Ronald
Reagan echoed the sentiment in 1987, when standing before the Berlin
Wall at the Brandenburg Gate, he challenged, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down
this wall!"
"The Germans are a great friend of
America, and that's why I'm here," said Willi Weiland, a 66-year-old
Germans who was one of roughly 4,000 people invited to attend Mr.
Obama's speech.
During the speech, Mr. Obama
reinforced the point, paying tribute to the attending Gail Halvorsen, a
92-year-old former U.S. pilot who participated in the Berlin airlifts of
the late 1940s and is known as the "Candy Bomber."
Unlike Mr. Obama's Victory Column
speech five years ago with much less security, his Wednesday appearance
was a far more restricted affair. Offices and residents around the gate
were barred from opening windows or using roof terraces, and a broad
zone around the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin's most famous landmark, was
closed to the general public.
That didn't stop a couple of
demonstrators in the audience from chanting and unraveling large sheets
that read, "Stop Drones," and "No NATO," before the sheets were promptly
whisked away.
Though Mr. Obama peppered his speech
with references to Berlin as an enduring symbol of freedom and the
significance of the trans-Atlantic partnership, Germans took note that
it had taken five years for him to return to Berlin as president.
Without the Cold War context that
underlined previous U.S. presidential visits, "it's clear Europe is
playing less of a role and the U.S. is looking more in the direction of
the Pacific," Ms. Stockhecke said. "That has definitely registered in
Germany."
http://tinyurl.com/k8o2lvm
1 comment:
@ChuckTodd blames O’s bomb in Berlin on the heat.
O’s Berlin speech on 19 June 2013: 86°F;
O’s Berlin speech on 28 July 2008: 91°F
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