Nat’l Museum gets part of Berlin Wall

GERMANY will turn over to the Philippines today (Wednesday) a two-ton original piece of the historic Berlin Wall, 15 years after Manila requested for a portion of the iconic Cold War barrier.

German parliamentary state secretary Brigitte Zypries will hand over the gift to the National Museum as she leads a four-day, high-level business mission that started on Tuesday.

“This part of the Wall is a gift by the Senate of the City of Berlin to the Philippine government and the (Filipino) people in remembrance of the peaceful EDSA Revolution, which happened just a few years before a peaceful revolution by the people of East Berlin tore down the Berlin Wall that divided Germany,” Ambassador Thomas Ossowski said.

In a statement, Ossowski thanked the German shipping company Kuehne & Nagel which brought the piece from Berlin to Manila “free of charge.”

According to the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Philippines first asked to acquire a portion of the Berlin Wall in 2000 through Manila’s then Ambassador Jose Abeto Zaide.

Berlin’s city government agreed to donate to “the city and people of Manila” a segment of the wall in November 2014 after President Aquino’s visit to Germany.

The portion given to the Philippines, said to be the 22nd section out of a total of 40, used to stand at Potsdam Square—considered the heart of metropolitan Berlin.

The wall section is painted with graffiti art and the word “HAPPY” in black letters is written in one area.

Zypries will be here until Oct. 9. She is to take part in talks on German-Philippine economic relations and witness the inauguration of the German-Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry as a full pledged member of the German network of business chambers.

Zypries is currently one of three parliamentary state secretaries at the German ministry of economic affairs and energy.

“Germany is the Philippines’ most important trade partner in Europe with a bilateral trade volume of 4.8 billion euro (about P250 billion) and there are strong indicators that the figures for 2015 will be even higher,” Ossowski said.

Data from the German Embassy show that bilateral trade in the first quarter of 2015 grew by 32 percent year-on-year.