In my “Historological Near Collision” posting of October 23 I mentioned a chance for Angela Merkel, Germany’s Reichkanzlerin, to make herself “immortal” by commemorating not only the fall of the Berlin Wall yesterday 20 years ago, but also the assault on Hitler, which took place almost exactly 50 years before that.
Like most people of my age and/or background, I was watching the Berlin festivities on television yesterday evening. While I watched a host of important world leaders, who had been invited to the party, hold their speeches. They had a lot to tell and many people to thank, and none of them could put enough emphasis on the significance of the events 20 years ago. I found everything very impressive of course, but I was eagerly waiting for Angela Merkel to do her thing: I wanted to know if she was going to mention my big hero of 70 years ago: Georg Elser.
And if she had, I could have flaunted the importance and high responsibility level of my Blog-readers…. Just imagine: Angela Merkel reading my stuff…
Alas, as became clear by the time Angela ended her speech, that she was not going to mention Georg at all. Apparently, she does NOT read my blog and nor do her lieutenants. Their loss, no doubt, but she did miss a high-order PR opportunity.
On the other hand, she did something even better: she commemorated the Reichs Kristallnacht which took place EXACTLY 71 years ago, in the night from November 9 to November 10, 1938. And I must admit: I had missed that fact entirely, despite my giant weak spot for historological and totally coincidental time-line event collision.
Well done, Angie. We-love-on-you. Mentioning the Kristallnacht was a good addition to the extensive Thank-You’s you waved from East to West; from Gorbatsjov via Medvedjev and Clinton to Obama. You have convinced me. The former DDR managed to deliver a great StatesWoman for the united Gross Deutschland. And that is not bad for a has-been Commie backwater.
