FRG President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (Frank-Walter Steinmeier) noted the ambiguity given on November 9 in the history of Germany. Three major events took place on that day – the proclamation of the Weimar Republic in 1918, the Kristallnacht pogroms in 1938 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he said in an official ceremony at Bellevue Palace in Berlin on Tuesday 9 November.
At the ceremony, which was also attended by the acting. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bundestag President Bärbel Bas, Bundesrat President Bodo Ramelow and Federal Constitutional Court Chief Stefan Harbarth, Steimayer called for the November 9th date to be perceived “with all its contradictions.” …
“A very German day”
“This is a meaningful day, a bright and dark day. It makes our hearts beat and causes tears. It gives us hope for the good that lurks in our country, and plunges us into despair because of its catastrophic nature,” the President said, noting that perhaps that is why November 9 is such a German day.
Steinmeier rejected the term “fateful day” because, according to him, the events of November 9 were caused not by a higher power, but by people – the forces of progress and liberation and the forces of barbarism and injustice. “Precisely because we are talking here about human deeds, about what the Germans have done, and what lessons we can learn from this, November 9 is such a significant day,” the federal president emphasized.
Meanwhile, the Central Council of Jews in Germany spoke out against recalling several events at once on November 9. “November 9 should be a national day of remembrance for the victims of the Holocaust,” said council chairman Josef Schuster in Berlin. He noted that the fall of the Berlin Wall is also a happy event for the Jewish community in Germany, but still in the center, he said, are the memories of the Jewish pogroms of the “Kristallnacht”.
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