In Germany, some big events to celebrate

This year Germany has some big events to celebrate. The main one took place this past weekend when the country marked the 60th anniversary of the founding of the democratic Federal Republic of Germany. To mark this important date, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Horst Köhler attended an ecumenical service at the Dom in Berlin. These years have seen a country thoroughly devastated, which after World War II and the Holocaust had been transformed into a pariah among nations, evolved into the world’s third-largest industrial nation and the world’s leading exporter. After the war, a country that had once been the home of poets and thinkers, admired all over the world, had become the refuge of warmongers, murderers and barbarians. In this atmosphere, the new constitution was signed on May 23, 1949 in Bonn, which would be West Germany’s capital until the reunification with East Germany in 1990 when Berlin became again the capital. And now 60 years later Germans are living in peace with their neighbors. Together they share a common currency -the euro– and the political institutions of the European Union.
Coming the fall Germany will celebrate two decades since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the event which led to the reunification of Germany. Today, over 82 million people live side by side in Germany — native Germans and immigrants, former East Germans (”Ossis”) and former West Germans (”Wessis”).