Germany’s President called for better integration of the country’s roughly four million Muslims yesterday, as he praised those who defeated communism to pave the way for reunification 20 years ago.
In his first major set-piece speech, Christian Wulff highlighted the challenges ahead of modern, reunited Germany, focusing on the difficulties of integrating its large Muslim population.
“Twenty years after reunification, we stand before the huge task of finding new solidarity in a Germany that is part of a swiftly changing world,” he said.
“Christianity is of course part of Germany. Judaism is of course part of Germany. This is our Judeo-Christian history. But now Islam is also part of Germany,” said the President.
He demanded that those living in Germany adhere to the country’s constitution and its way of life, including learning the language.
“When German Muslims write to me to say ‘you are our President’, I reply with all my heart ‘yes, of course I am your President’.”
Mr Wulff hailed the reunification of the capitalist West and communist East barely a year after the Berlin Wall fell as “a momentous day that a people experience only rarely”.
“I bow before everyone who fought for freedom ... your courage moved the world,” he told an audience of dignitaries including Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union President Herman Van Rompuy, to generous applause.
Mrs Merkel, who was brought up in East Germany, recalled her life growing up under communism and said she would have been a “straightforward scientist” if the Berlin Wall had not fallen.
Mrs Merkel, now considered the world’s most powerful woman, told Bild am Sonntag that despite the constraints of life in East Germany, “it is certainly true to say that it was not boring”.
Leaders of Russia and the United States, who once faced off on either side of the Iron Curtain that ran through Berlin, were quick to congratulate Germany.
US President Barack Obama praised “the courage and conviction of the German people that brought down the Berlin Wall” while Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev said reunification carried an “enduring historic significance not only for the German people but for the whole of Europe”.
After World War II, the victorious powers, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the United States, carved defeated Germany into four zones.
With the advent of the Cold War, Moscow erected a border between its eastern zone and the three western Allied sections, including the Wall that split Berlin in two.
On October 3, 1990, just under a year after the Wall was yanked down in a bloodless revolution, the reunification treaty bringing the two halves of the country together came into effect amid joyful scenes.
Ever since, this date has been a public holiday to mark Germany’s national day.
In a recent poll, 84 per cent of Germans said they believed national unification after four decades of division had been the right decision, despite a lingering economic gap between east and west.
Just 14 per cent said unity had been a mistake, according to the survey for ZDF public television.
While Germany has become a leading light on the international political stage and is Europe’s top economy, the country is still battling to overcome yawning gaps between the west and the east.
Unemployment remains nearly twice as high in the eastern states and living standards are considerably lower, despite an estimated €1.3 trillion in transfers from west to east.
The celebrations took place under heavy security after around 1,800 mainly left-wing activists conducted a march in Bremen on Saturday evening. Yesterday also marked the quiet closing of a less happy chapter in Germany’s history, with the final repayment of around €70 million of interest on its World War I debt.