Celebrations as Germany Turns 60

BERLIN (AFP) – Saturday was a big day for Germany with celebrations marking 60 years as a democracy, the election of a president and perhaps most importantly for many people, the climax of the football season.

A quarter of a million Germans gathered in Berlin to celebrate 60 years since the country emerged from the ruins of the Nazi era and World War II to lay the foundations for a democratic, peaceful and prosperous nation.

Meanwhile MPs and public figures were due to choose who will hold the largely ceremonial post of German president for the next five years, with the conservative incumbent Horst Koehler tipped to secure a second term.

Last but not least the country was on tenterhooks to find out which football team would clinch the Bundesliga title, with Bayern Munich, Stuttgart and Wolfsburg all in the running to be crowned champions.

A newly felt sense of good-humoured patriotism was expected to be on full show around the historic Brandenburg Gate for a celebration of all things German, six decades since the foundation of the federal republic in 1949.

"We Germans all have a reason to be happy about the German Federal Republic turning 60 and to celebrate together its birthday on May 23," Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a podcast ahead of the celebrations.

Specifically, the events celebrate the 1949 creation of a democratic nation that still bore the shame of the Nazis' horrors and was struggling to rebuild after total defeat and destruction in 1945.

The constitution that was drawn up for this country -- West Germany as it was -- has been used a model for other young democracies, primarily in eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Other events to mark this milestone are planned across Germany in 2009, which also sees the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall before the unification of West and East Germany in 1990, and is an election year.

Being patriotic is something of a new phenomenon here, however.

For decades, deep psychological scars from the war kept such feelings at bay, summed up by West Germany's then-president Gustav Heinemann who in 1969 famously declared that he loved his wife, not his country.

But in recent years, Germans have become more comfortable with patriotism, as seen in an orgy of flag-waving national pride when Germany hosted the football World Cup in 2006.

It is not all roses, however, with Germany's worst recession since World War II shaking many people's trust in the country's cherished social market economy.

The slump, with the accompanying rise in unemployment and huge increase in national debt, is expected to figure highly in campaigning for general elections on September 27 when Merkel is standing for a second term.

Convincing voters that she and her conservative bloc can get Germany on the road to recovery is a tall order -- as it is for the other parties.

The selection by 1,223 MPs and public figures of the next president should be a shoo-in for Koehler, a former head of the International Monetary Fund with the backing of Merkel and massive public support.

But the fact that the vote is held by secret ballot could produce an upset and see left-wing academic Gesine Schwan as the new head of state -- a result that would be of considerable embarrassment to Merkel.

But perhaps what will be capturing most people's attention is the final day of the football season.

Wolfsburg are two points clear of holders Bayern Munich with just Werder Bremen between them and their maiden Bundesliga title. But if they lose, Bayern or Stuttgart -- facing off in Munich -- could clinch the title instead.