Hundreds of French and German politicians and cultural leaders gathered Tuesday in Berlin to mark 50 years since signing the Elysée treaty of friendship, reports The Guardian.
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.
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 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 postage stamp, and an Elysée-Spezial €50 ticket offered by German and French railways for travel between the two countries.
Read more of this report from The Guardian.
See also: Why a strained Franco-German 'couple' stay married