Anyone who threatens the Baltic states threatens the entire North Atlantic Alliance and Germany, said President of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier during a meeting with presidents from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on the 100th anniversary of the countries diplomatic relations with Germany.

Epistula non erubescit. A letter does not blush, wrote Cicero. In modern German, we have a similar saying: "Paper is patient," meaning that it’s possible to write a great deal down on paper without this necessarily having any immediate consequences.

As you arrived, the displays behind glass showed us quite the opposite. Paper can be impatient, momentous, world-changing. Like the exhibits from the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office, which trace the turbulent history of our countries’ relations. These are documents which have shaped world history, such as the provisional agreement on the restoration of normal relations between Germany and Latvia, dated 15 July 1920, the letters of response from your Foreign Ministers at the time concerning the exchange of notes on the establishment of diplomatic relations with Germany, dated 28 August 1991, and last but certainly not least, the inquiry by the Friends of the Norderstedt Puppet Theatre concerning the possibility of holding events in Estonia. Yes, culture too is an inseparable element of our bilateral relations!

Today, I have come full circle. Not long after I took office, in the summer of 2017, I spent quite some time touring your countries. I still remember one August day very well – that fateful date, the twenty-third of August. In Tallinn, dear Kersti Kaljulaid, at the Academy of Sciences, I endeavoured to sketch out how our countries’ turbulent history is crystallised in this twenty-third of August, from the darkest hours, the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact in 1939, to the most joyous ones, the Baltic Way in 1989, that human chain calling for freedom, which inspired bold individuals in the East of my own country, too. I spoke about how our shared history still affects us and shapes the responsibility that we bear today. And about how history must never be wielded as a weapon, but rather how we should learn from it and accept the obligation it imposes on us, for a better future.

In Riga I had the privilege of visiting the Museum of the Occupation with your predecessor, dear Egils Levits, and talking to young people about the digital future. And with your predecessor in Lithuania, dear Gitanas Nausėda, I visited the Bundeswehr troops who are stationed in Rukla as a concrete expression of our solidarity with our fellow members of the Alliance, and paid tribute to the victims of the Holocaust in Paneriai.

The past and the present – both form part of our countries’ relations. And it is because we face up to our past that we are able to work in the present for a better future.

During previous visits, we have strolled together through the garden of Schloss Bellevue. Or, as Schiller wrote:

"[...] fleeing at last the prisonlike chambers
And the small-minded talk, gladly escapes unto you."

After the months of lockdown, the cancelled trips abroad, the lack of face-to-face meetings – what a wonderful escape, to leave the confines of the office. What a joy to see you again, absorbed in face-to-face conversation.

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