For a brief time....roughly one single day....on 25 Jun 1963....John F. Kennedy visited Wiesbaden. Around 100,000 residents of Wiesbaden came out on the streets....to welcome the US President.
For the past couple of weeks, and up until mid-September....there's an exhibit of this President and the visit on display at the Wiesbaden City Museum. Entry fee: five Euro.
It's an interesting episode to walk around town and note these posters plastered up. I would imagine at least three hundred posters are hanging up around Wiesbaden, and most everyone knows of the exhibit.
An affection for JFK? Probably more than most Presidents. Most will agree that JFK and Reagan both rate high on the German scale of popularity.
3 comments:
why Reagan?
Kennedy delivers the slam-dunk speech in Berlin...which pushes him to the top of German lists for US presidents. Second? Reagan. Reagan does two appearances. The first in May of 1985 where he attends a wreath cermenony at a WWII cemetery, which has both US and German men buried. No president had done that type of actvity before, and most believed that it was a signal that memories of WWII were to be let go. The speech had Bitburg later that same day...signaled that Germany was a major friend of the US. Both were seen as major positive signs of US friendship.
Later? The Berlin speech, with the 'tear-down-this-wall' theme, which got lots of press coverage and most Germans would see the eventual Berlin Wall collapse as connected in some small degree to Reagan. They may have hated Reagan for his saber-rattling, and star-wars technology push, but Reagan does come in number two.
I suspect in twenty years....not much will be said over President Obama....mostly because of the NSA business that occurred, and the fact that GITMO remains open while he promised over and over to the Germans that it would close.
Good answer
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