It should have been days full of pictures of friendship. Emmanuel Macron at the state banquet with Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Macron with Olaf Scholz shaking hands with young people, walking through Dresden’s old town, smiling politicians, starched tablecloths, neat, well-behaved young people – like the commemoration of 60 years of the Elysée Treaty , to 60 years of institutionalized Franco-German friendship.
These pictures, however, would have stood in sharp contrast to completely different pictures. Those of burning barricades, broken windows, clouds of tear gas and destroyed cars – images that have been reaching us from France for several nights. Many cities there have been in chaos since a police officer shot 17-year-old Nahel M. at close range last Tuesday.
It had already been indicated on Friday that Emmanuel Macron would probably postpone his visit. Macron is a president of images. He knows more about the power of images than almost any of his predecessors, he knows how to stage himself – that was already shown by his first inauguration in the night-time courtyard of the Louvre in 2017. And he also knows that pictures of a president shaking hands in Germany would not have been politically responsible in view of the uprisings in France. They would almost certainly have fueled the situation further.
The Franco-German friendship is a great asset, the state visit, the first in over 20 years, would have done her good. Dust has accumulated, things that are taken for granted, recently also, especially between the busy Macron and the cool Scholz, a complete lack of understanding for the situation and mood of the other. Can starched tablecloths and smiling youth change all that? Certainly not.
But it’s like a decades-long marriage. Anyone who doesn’t pull themselves together to stage anniversaries, who doesn’t have the courage to demonstrate their solidarity in public, even with a little pathos, sinks into everyday small things, slowly but noticeably alienating one another. And precisely that, alienation from Germany and France, is something nobody on the continent can afford in these times when Russia’s war in Ukraine demands a united European voice, when countries like Poland or Hungary are questioning Europe’s values.
And yet the cancellation was now correct. France sinking even further into chaos harms Europe, it also harms Germany, we depend on each other. The state visit will be rescheduled, perhaps these days of turmoil and cancellations will even focus a little more on the value and importance of Franco-German friendship than a state banquet alone would have done. Perhaps it will become clear that friendship also includes an understanding of the constraints of the other – now, but also in politics in general.
And maybe it will also become clear that the friendship between Germany and France – on the other side of the Rhine people like to speak of “marriage” – should not be limited to staged pomp but should be lived more in everyday life: on a municipal level, in companies , also and especially in schools. The proportion of French who learn German and Germans who learn French has been falling for years. We must become aware of this challenge and tackle it. Our “marriage” deserves it.
