Berlin (AFP)
Germany and Europe celebrate Saturday the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall that ended the division of the continent, in an atmosphere of zany, however, between the Allies of the Cold War era.
Sign of the lack of enthusiasm for this Jubilee, none of the great Western leaders made the trip Saturday in Berlin.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left the country Friday evening after a two-day visit and French President Emmanuel Macron will arrive only Sunday evening for a dinner with Chancellor Angela Merkel and German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
Two days before this anniversary, the French head of state threw a pavement into the pond by diagnosing that NATO was "brain dead".
Mr. Macron regretted the lack of co-ordination between the United States and NATO's partners and the single rider of Turkey, a member of the Alliance, who recently intervened in northern Syria.
Abandoning her habitual policeman, Angela Merkel, who has always been very Atlanticist, has assured herself that she does not share Mr. Macron's "radical" vision and "untimely judgment".
- Warning -
To the misunderstandings between the allies of the era of the end of the cold war, there is a heavy international geopolitical climate.
In Berlin, Mike Pompeo urged Western countries to "defend what was so hard-won in 1989" and to "realize that we are in a competition of values with non-free nations", particularly pointing to the China and Russia.
Also in the German capital on Friday, the appointed President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, followed suit. She called for vigilance against Beijing and Moscow and acknowledged a certain naivety in 1989 when the world wanted to believe that "the victory of liberal democracies could not be stopped".
Despite this gloomy backdrop, Berliners celebrate the fall of the Wall that divided their city for more than 28 years until the evening of November 9, 1989.
Highlight, Angela Merkel will hold a speech in the morning inside a chapel erected in a street full of history, the Bernauerstrasse, which was the scene of dramas during the construction of the Wall on August 13, 1961. From The inhabitants had thrown windows at the risk of their lives to pass to the West.
- Memory -
The chancellor, from East Germany, will be accompanied by the presidents of Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, countries which 30 years ago largely prepared the ground for the fall of the Wall.
In the evening, it will be the turn of the President of the Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to address the crowd at the Brandenburg Gate.
On the domestic front too, Germany is far from showing the same optimism as 30 years ago. Angela Merkel acknowledged that "it would take half a century or more" to complete German reunification.
The political and economic divide between the richest East and West of the country remains a burning news, especially with the success of the extreme right of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the former GDR.
"Nationalist and protectionist tendencies are gaining ground in the world," said Merkel Friday.
The anti-elite and anti-system message of the extreme right is a hit in the East where many "Ossis" (the nickname of the former East Germans) feel treated as second-class citizens.
The fall of the Berlin Wall on the evening of November 9, 1989, was peaceful and the images of Germans falling into each other's arms had traveled around the world.
"It's an event we never forget, it was madness, the wall was an impregnable fortress and suddenly it collapsed," recalls AFP Thomas Wendt, 67, who spent that evening in West Berlin.
© 2019 AFP