Kate Connolly in Berlin The Guardian, Tuesday 22 January 2013 18.22 GMT
Hundreds of politicians and cultural leaders gather in Berlin to mark 50 years since signing the Elysée treaty of friendship
Merkel and Hollande spoke of the chemistry and electrical currents connecting them. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters
In the end, it was a filmmaker rather than a politician who best summed up the alliance. "There is a certain indifference between them," said Wim Wenders. "But that doesn't surprise me, after 50 years of marriage."
The German Wings of Desire director was attending a reception for cultural figureheads gathered in Berlin on Tuesday as part of a marathon of events to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Elysée treaty, the pact that sealed Franco-German friendship after the second world war.
To mark the golden anniversary, stamps and coins were issued, French flags flew alongside German ones, and radio stations played chansons.
The lavish commemorations culminated in a joint session of parliament in the Reichstag, the seat of the lower house, to which the entire 577-strong French parliament was invited. There followed a concert of French and German music at the Berlin Philharmonic, and a banquet.
While Europe may have its problems, this was a day to stress the positives, so politicians on both sides spent the day lauding each other's countries. There was no mention of what a feat it had been, with freezing temperatures and thick snow, to get hundreds of French MPs by train and plane to Berlin on time and without any hitches. "Europe clearly is working," quipped one German government adviser.
In the end, the biggest hiccup was restricted to the military brass band, which was forced to cut short the musical programme of its welcoming ceremony for the French president, François Hollande, when some of the instruments of the brass section froze in the minus temperatures.
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who gave her French counterpart the red carpet treatment, sought to dampen talk of tensions between the two 58-year-olds, telling a press conference that they were on informal tu and du terms.
"It may be our best kept secret, that the chemistry actually works," Merkel said. Hollande added: "The current between us flows without needing any electricity." It was "the differences that make German-French relations so stimulating", Merkel added.
Those differences have been clear to see during the eurozone crisis, with Hollande revolting against Germany's austerity drive, rows over retirement age, and Germany's questioning of France's commitment to structural reform. And then there were other disputes, such as Berlin's refusal to become involved in French military missions, first in Libya and now in Mali, and the recent failed fusion of the aerospace and defence firms EADS and BAE Systems.
The disagreements have only been exacerbated by the contrast between the relative fiscal health of Germany, and France's current economic woes. Neither did it help to smooth the relationship when Germany last week removed its gold reserves from the Banque de France, in a move some in Paris viewed as an affront.
A party celebrating the historic 1963 embrace between France's Charles de Gaulle and the West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer was never going to be easy at such a time, and prompted one commentator to use the word zwangsfeiern – "partying under duress".
But the will to make it work was surely there, in projects such as the joint newspaper, produced by the French and German dailies Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung, a joint Elysée treaty stamp, and an Elysée-Spezial €50 ticket offered by German and French railways for travel between the two countries.
Radio stations took the opportunity to dust off a track by the French chanteuse Barbara, which many say did as much to thaw postwar relations as the treaty. Called Göttingen, the French-Jewish singer's tribute to the central German city went: "Of course, we have la Seine … but God, the roses are beautiful in Göttingen". Recorded in French and German, it became a hit in both countries.
During the Bundestag session, some MPs reminisced about school exchanges they had undertaken as teenagers, talking of the big step it had been for French families who had been affected by the war to host young Germans. Germany's very private finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, revealed that one of his most painful experiences in France had been falling in love with a French girl. "I had love sickness because of her," he said. "But it's so long ago now she wouldn't recognise me any more."
But Hollande said that while the youth of today had the "great fortune" of not having experienced war, they now faced "an economic and social crisis of unprecedented duration". He stressed that both countries had a responsibility to create jobs.
A survey of French and Germans showed, however, that despite the many exchanges the two countries still viewed each other in terms of cliches. For Germans, asked for a spontaneous summary of the French, the words culture, fashion, luxury and savoir-vivre came to mind; the French, when thinking of the Germans, talked about beer, Berlin, cars, Nazis and war.
The former Germany foreign minister Joschka Fischer said that for him, as for other German youths, France had been a place of dreams, free from the shackles of German history.
"Eating lamb chops with green beans in a French bistro, it changed the way you felt about life," the 64-year-old told Der Spiegel.
But Jacques Delors, who oversaw the construction of the European economic and monetary union, warned against too much nostalgia, saying that France and Germany, on whose co-operation the foundations of the European project was built, had a responsibility to concentrate on the present, not the past.
"I would like to see this week's celebration not descend into sentimentality," said the 87-year-old French politician.
"Enough with the embraces, the sauerkraut and drinking beer together. I prefer to see Merkel and Hollande … point out how to do things better in the future."
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