The small, slim man from Germany is not the only European in this square on this day.

At one of the corners of the square stands Marie-Joseph Motier, Marquis de La Fayette, a world politician of the 18th century, if you will, albeit in bronze.

The French nobleman fought alongside the American colonies for independence from England, before a few years later transferred the ideas of inalienable human rights to the old continent and fought for the revolution in France.

Ralph Bollmann

Correspondent for economic policy and deputy head of economics and “Money & More” for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.

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But Olaf Scholz, although quite history-conscious, is not so interested in the monument on this day, but rather in the building behind him.

Lafayette Square in Washington is home to the White House, the seat of the US President, a symbol of power and influence in the world.

The German Social Democrat did not meet with Joe Biden that morning, not even - which would be more appropriate for the Vice Chancellor in terms of protocol - with his deputy Kamala Harris, whose motorcade he was able to watch over breakfast in the street café.

But at least: Scholz has just had a long chat with his local counterpart Janet Yellen, the former central bank governor and most powerful finance minister in the world, in the Treasury Building, which is connected to the White House by a mythical underground passage.

At the center of world politics

You can hardly get any closer to the center of world politics, and the spirit of the first incumbent Alexander Hamilton, who, from the loose amalgamation of 13 North American colonies through joint borrowing, formed the United States of America in the first place, is still blowing a little bit here you know today: a process that Scholz referred to by declaring the European Corona reconstruction program to be the "Hamilton moment" of a future Brussels state last year.

So those are the associations that matter when Scholz sits in front of the television cameras with the White House behind him. To do this, he took the eight-hour flight across the Atlantic, one of the first major business trips since the tough German winter lockdown. He spoke to Yellen above all about the global minimum tax for companies, "a major reform that will change a hundred-year-old practice and end the abuse of tax rules," as he first wrote in German, then in a very decent English for the news broadcasts Spelled out in the evening.

Oh well: The two of them also spelled out the climate problem, of course, the colleague is of course positive about Scholz's suggestion of a worldwide "climate club" for the willing.

And there is already a consensus between Berlin and Washington that the economic upswing after the Corona slump should not be stalled by too fast and sharp savings by the public sector;

One hundred billion euros in additional loans are already foreseen in the German budget for 2022, the year after the federal election.

Helmut Schmidt was the only one who made it

Scholz wants to become Federal Chancellor after the election on September 26th. To do this, he has to prove his surefootedness on the world political stage, and the office he took up almost three and a half years ago with precisely this goal serves as an instrument for this. He is the nineteenth finance minister in the history of the Federal Republic - and by no means the only one who aspires to the head of the government.