There are many settings that could testify to the proposition that history repeats itself as farce;

the stage of Munich's Hotel Bayerischer Hof is one of them.

For the 58th time, politicians and high-ranking military officials will meet there this weekend for analyses, talks and chats about the security situation in the world.

The former Wehrmacht officer, resistance fighter, lawyer and specialist publisher Ewald von Kleist initiated the meeting in 1963, in the middle of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the democracies of the West.

The then "Wehrkundetagung" survived the period of détente and European unification and has now returned to its strategic starting position as the "Munich Security Conference" - the intensified East-West confrontation.

Johannes Leithauser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Although the Russian government has not registered any participants for the current conference for the first time in many years, the past appearances of the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, which mostly consisted of a staccato of accusations and allegations against NATO and the western world, were lively enough to still be vividly remembered.

At least since February 2015, the date of the conference that followed Russia's annexation of Crimea, the meeting has once again been dominated by the conflict between the NATO countries and Russian threats of aggression.

Chairmen ensured global recognition

But contrasting with some moments of déjà vu is the fact that the conference has grown steadily from its inception as an event.

In the beginning it was primarily a class reunion for a few dozen Western strategists, but it has long since become the center of the political world for three days.

Even under the restrictions of the corona pandemic, several dozen heads of state and government, around one hundred ministers, numerous directors of alliances and organizations are coming to Munich this weekend - they form a reservoir of political decision-makers that can at best be used with the annual start of the UN General Assembly in Munich New York in September is comparable.

The increase in importance of the Munich conference can hardly be derived from an equally growing increase in the importance of German foreign policy.

Although the leaders of German politics regularly travel to their performances, this year Chancellor Olaf Scholz will lead the Berlin squad.

There was also no lack of appeals that Germany must take its role in the world more seriously than before - eight years ago the then Federal President Joachim Gauck and the then Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is his successor today, even joined in such an invocation of meaning joined forces.

However, they did not produce any immediately noticeable consequences.