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Obama team mulling speech at Brandenburg Gate

Democratic US presidential candidate Barack Obama has requested permission to give an address at the Brandenburg Gate when he visits Berlin later this month, according to German media reports.

Published: 6 July 2008 12:03 CEST

Obama team mulling speech at Brandenburg Gate

Photo: DPA

Although it’s still not official, various German media are reporting that Obama’s team has contacted the Berlin Senate to discuss the possibility of the presidential hopeful delivering an outdoor speech in front of the famous landmark. It would likely be his only public speech during an upcoming European tour which is set to include stops in Germany, France and the UK.

If permission is granted, the address would be loaded with historical significance. The Brandenburg Gate is where former US President Ronald Regan gave a famous speech in 1987, during which he asked then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “tear down” the Berlin Wall.

Both Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have expressed interest in meeting Obama, although dates for his visit have not yet been confirmed.

Obama is immensely popular in Berlin – a factor that appears to have some of his advisors worried. According to reports in the daily Berliner Morgenpost, some of his staff have warned him that excessive popularity in Europe could end up costing him votes at home, as was the case with 2004 presidential candidate, John Kerry.

Macron's German teacher opens up about 'ideal student'

Over the last year, Gröninger, a German language teacher based in France, has been helping Macron to prepare for his state visit to Germany — the first in a quarter of a century by a French president.

The French leader learnt German in school but had turned to the language teacher, who also trained Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, to improve it.

Macron is keen to interact with Germans in their own tongue, Groeninger told AFP.

“He wants to reach and touch people through the German language,” said the teacher, who also helped Macron to prepare his eulogy for the late former German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble which he delivered before the Bundestag partly in German.

“People probably think that he just memorises everything. But he understands everything that he is saying,” said Groeninger.

EN DIRECT | Hommage à Wolfgang Schäuble. https://t.co/cIFLqf7zK8

— Élysée (@Elysee) January 22, 2024

Bread and cold cuts

In his younger days, Macron travelled twice to the western city of Dortmund on student exchanges.

“I would never forget the German Abendbrot (evening bread) — this tradition of not serving anything warm in the evening, but bread and cold cuts,” he once told his German biographer.

Since then as French leader, Macron has made many more trips to Germany, including one to Hamburg in October, where Chancellor Olaf Scholz treated him to the local delight — fish sandwich.

Despite the culinary culture shocks, Gröninger said his student is not lacking in enthusiasm.

“He is an ideal student. He is receptive and really wants to do his best. He also has fun doing it,” said Gröninger.

But scheduling is an issue, said the teacher, who has to be at the ready in case the president has a spare minute to practice a bit more.

Before giving his first lesson, the teacher had doubts about correcting the French president.

“I was thinking, how am I going to interrupt him?” he recalled. “But I was surprised. He is a very nice guy.”

As to Macron’s weakness in German, the teacher politely pointed to the “typical difficulties of the French to pronounce the H” correctly.

Key in the training is mouth movements, said Gröninger, who noted that “the French language activates only three muscles, the German a few more”.

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