It's not just Olaf Scholz's first speech before the United Nations General Assembly, from that lectern in front of the green marble wall in the assembly hall of the New York UN building on the East River;

it is his first stay in New York ever.

And so you can see him in many places in Manhattan in two days: in conversation with a whole squad of African heads of state and government at the headquarters of the German UN embassy, ​​on the sidewalk of First Avenue, when he quickly walks from the UN site to the representative office of the Turkish Republic to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks there, and at lunchtime in Bryant Park behind Fifth Avenue, that sycamore-lined oasis where many New Yorkers from the shops and offices in the area spend their lunch break.

Johannes Leithauser

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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Scholz came here accompanied by the writer Daniel Kehlmann - "City tour" - the protocol calls the event.

It will be more of a circular march, the two of them, surrounded by bodyguards and protocol officers, hurry across the gravel path to a snack pavilion, where the Chancellor then gets a hamburger from the brown paper bag and listens to Kehlmann's New York experiences.

Scholz speaks of "major global crises"

And after these impressions of an individual, the whole world is waiting for Scholz again: first a summit to secure global food security, then a meeting in the German UN embassy with heads of state and government from African countries.

Lots of people are crammed into the foyer of the narrow high-rise office building at the corner of 49th Street, which houses the German representative office.

As the host of the G7 summit, the Federal Chancellor invited the South African President and the head of the African Union together with heads of state from Asia (India and Indonesia) and South America (Argentina) to Elmau in Bavaria in the summer to demonstrate that the propagation multilateral world is not just a formula for the German government, it is an obligation.

In his speech to the General Assembly, Scholz does not immediately aim at Russia's attack on Ukraine, according to the previously published text of the speech, but begins with the general image of "major global crises" that "pile up, connect and intensify before us".

Many saw it as “the harbingers of a world without rules”.

The Chancellor does not want to follow that.

On the one hand, he swears by the rules that have applied since the founding of the United Nations, which are gathered in its charter and which “promise us all freedom and peaceful coexistence”.

On the other hand, he warns that in a world in which those rules are disregarded, the result will not be anarchy, "but the rule of the strong over the weak".

With this chain of arguments, Scholz tries, still without naming the Russian wartime violence,

He warns of a world order in which independent nations “have to submit to their stronger neighbors or their colonial masters” – thereby inserting Putin’s current aggression into long-ago patterns of behavior against which the southern world has long and to this day emancipated itself seeks.

Scholz also speaks of “blatant imperialism” – just as French President Emanuel Macron did before him in front of the General Assembly.

The Chancellor's appeal to everyone is not to sit back and relax "when a well-armed, nuclear superpower - a founding member of the United Nations and a permanent member of the UN Security Council - wants to move borders by force.

And now he names names: "Russia's war of conquest" cannot be justified by anything;

Putin is leading him with the sole aim

Speaking to the United Nations, the Chancellor justified the fact that Germany saw it as its duty to defend human rights at all times and everywhere “with the history of my country”.

He said, "Germany, which committed a breach of civilization by murdering six million Jews that does not tolerate any comparison, knows about the fragility of our civilization".

But Scholz also formulates the demand for Germany to “take on greater responsibility in the world”, including in the United Nations: as a permanent member of the Security Council, and at least initially with an application for a non-permanent seat for the 2027/28 session.

In the next breath, the Federal Chancellor associates German ambition with support for the "up-and-coming, dynamic countries and regions of Asia, Africa and southern America".

who also “need to have a greater political say on the world stage”.

This results in "joint responsibility", which also increases "the acceptance of our decisions".

At this moment, Russia remains unnamed, but included - because its influence would also dwindle at the United Nations if new actors gained more importance.

Daniel Kehlmann's first major book success was entitled "Measuring the World" and contrasted the research trips of Alexander von Humboldt with the mathematical calculations of Carl Friedrich Gauss.

Before the United Nations, Scholz combines his rejection of Russian zealotry for power with the encouragement of new actors from other continents - a new survey of the world.