Barack Obama’s rousing speech before Berlin’s Victory Column to more than 200,000 cheering fans won the hearts of Germans, with newspapers today describing his appearance as a historic event.
“Prince America embraces Berlin,” read the headline in the capital’s B-Z tabloid across a full-page photo of Mr Obama.
“He was celebrated like a pop star,” said the top-selling Bild.
Mr Obama next stop is Paris to meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy, then London before heading back to the US tomorrow.
While in Berlin, he met German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
In his half-hour address Thursday, Mr Obama invoked Berlin’s history to press his theme of co-operation and partnership – focusing on the U.S. and British-led Berlin Airlift that saved the capital from a Soviet blockade, and the tenacity of the city’s citizens through the Cold War and the decades of division by the Berlin Wall.
“People of the world, look at Berlin,” he said – a phrase headlining scores of German newspapers today.
The Berlin visit opened the European leg of a tour designed to reassure sceptical voters in the US about Mr Obama’s ability to lead the country and take a frayed cross-Atlantic alliance in a new direction after eight years of the Bush administration.
On the latter point he seemed to have succeeded, with B-Z invoking President John F. Kennedy’s famous solidarity pledge of “Ich bin ein Berliner” to say that yesterday was “the day on which Berlin again said ’I am an American.”’
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Barack Obama’s rousing speech before Berlin’s Victory Column to more than 200,000 cheering fans won the hearts of Germans, with newspapers today describing his appearance as a historic event.
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