photo by Yuhang Yuan

It wasn't the Love Parade, but with all the love in the air, sometimes it felt like it. Barack Obama's speech in Berlin yesterday attracted throngs of eager onlookers---German and American flags a'plenty---up to a quarter million by one estimate, teeming masses along the Straße des 17.Juni, the historical avenue connecting the Bradenburg Gate with the Victory Column. The street is known best internationally as the site of the Love Parade (which has since left Berlin for the Ruhr) and most recently the Fan Mile where multiple widescreens broadcast the World Cup to crowds of soccer fans.

A good number of Berlin's 13,000 Americans were in the mix among the Germans, excepting those Americans working at the U.S. Embassy who were forbidden to attend the speech.

Obama's performance went off without a hitch. German observers are fawning over his professionalism and charismatic presence. The speech itself, rhetorically impressive and seemingly leaving something for everyone, put his appearance in the narrative of past countrymen, Obama acknowledging from the beginning that he came as an American citizen and a citizen of the world, rather than as President. The difference between Senator Obama and President Obama was at the centre of Angela Merkel's resistance to his original request to use the Brandenburg Gate. The story of the Berlin Airlift, started 60 years ago this summer, began and ended the speech. The breaking down of walls was employed as a metaphor at least 17 times. Germans were especially receptive to his admission that the U.S., 'my country' (notably not the Bush administration), had made mistakes and, appealing to Lincoln's 'more perfect union' concept, that the U.S. had not yet perfected itself. Obama made a plea for the unity of all mankind (more walls breaking) and the mutual responsibility that Europe and America hold for each other---not to mention the need of NATO for more troops in Afghanistan, a less than popular standpoint for the home crowd.

But, pundits counter, it wasn't necessarily a risky move either, considering that the intention of the speech was to impress, first and foremost, American voters watching at home. On that point, a request from Germany to offer more military resources in an unpopular but arguably necessary war would come across as tough love and statemanlike---just the sort of foreign policy brawn Obama needs to buff up stateside.

It was not the 'major speech' on the trans-Atlantic partnership that many had expected, nor did he try to speek German (luckily), but it was generally judged a success and a first look at someone who may well be heading the United States in 2009. Germans are relieved at the prospect of someone like Obama replacing the deeply unpopular Bush, who managed to all but ignore Europe for the last eight years. There is great hope, to use the Obama campaign's favourite word, that he would represent a new dawn in US-German relations. Germans, while in general more resistant to lofty rhetoric, seem to admire Obama for what he represents as the promise of the American idea.