REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT AN OFFICIAL LUNCH HOSTED BY THE GOVERNING MAYOR, MR. KLAUS WOWEREIT
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT AN OFFICIAL LUNCH HOSTED BY THE GOVERNING MAYOR, MR. KLAUS WOWEREIT, RATHAUS, BERLIN
Governing Mayor,
Ladies and Gentlemen (meine Damen und Herren)
On behalf of my entire delegation, and on my own behalf, I thank you for your warm welcome to this historic capital city, so aptly described by the eighteenth century writer, Jean Paul as more “part of the world than a city”.
As part of the world, Berlin is a remarkable and enduring survivor. Its artistic, cultural and architectural splendours have, along with its heart and spirit, experienced periods of political turbulence and social upheaval. It bears the scars of awful wars and artificial division but with unification behind it today Berlin is admired for the fresh imagination brought to its rebuilding, for its dynamism and its welcome.
Between Ireland and Berlin there have been many intriguing connections. I think of the pioneering work in our Irish language of Humboldt University’s Professor of Celtic Philology, Kuno Meyer, the sesquicentenary of whose birth we celebrate this year. And of course who could forget the famous visit to the Berlin wall in 1963 of that great Irish American President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy who returned to his ancestral Irish home in the very same week. In his inspirational speech on Europe’s freedom, delivered in this, then divided city and in a fragmented Europe, President Kennedy looked forward to a time “when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great Continent of Europe [,] in a peaceful and hopeful globe.”
On his visit later that same week to a then very poor, underachieving Ireland, he expressed his profound belief in the future of Ireland and foresaw that “when our hour is come, we will have something to give to the world”.
Kennedy did not live to see how Ireland and Berlin would fulfil the great promise he saw in both places. Berlin is today a city united and blossoming. Ireland is a prosperous and peaceful country. Ireland and Germany are members of the European Union, the greatest undertaking in egalitarian, democratic collegiality and partnership ever contemplated in our world. Around the Union table old enemies have become friends, good neighbours and colleagues. They have put the past behind them and focussed on the future to give Europe’s children the chance to blossom in shared peace and prosperity.
We are a fortunate generation who gather here today. We live what was once a distant dream and now we are called to dream anew for a humanly decent future for ourselves and all of humankind. We know that friendly, respectful and warm human relationships form the basic building blocks of that future. Through this visit we invest our friendship in the strong bilateral relationship between Ireland and Germany, knowing that that investment takes us, inch by inch, closer to that “peaceful and hopeful world” which we hope will be our legacy to future generations.
Vielen Dank. Thank You.