By Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former U.S. President Barack Obama, close political allies when they were both in office, reunited in Washington on Monday for an event to launch her memoir in the United States.
Merkel forged a tight relationship with Obama during his eight years in the White House. Obama’s last foreign trip as president in 2016 included a stop in Berlin to appear with his German counterpart, who was preparing for then President-elect Donald Trump’s first term.
During Monday’s event, Merkel and Obama discussed German unification, the 2008 global financial crisis, climate change and immigration in a discussion that prompted sporadic applause and laughter from a sold-out crowd of about 3,000 at The Anthem, an event venue in Washington.
The two leaders displayed an easy rapport. Obama asked Merkel questions in English and she responded in German. He told the audience that her English was excellent but the trained scientist was a very precise person and wanted to speak in her mother tongue.
Merkel bantered back later that Obama, a lawyer, was very precise, too.
The two joked about Obama’s trip to Berlin as a presidential candidate in 2008 when she opposed his team’s request to speak in front of the Brandenburg Gate. He said she was worried afterwards that he was angry. “I was fine,” he intoned.
The two leaders did not discuss Trump, who beat Democrat Kamala Harris in last month’s election. Merkel did say she hoped the U.S. would eventually elect a woman president.
In her book, titled “Freedom: Memories 1954-2021” and written before the Nov. 5 election, she expressed hope that Harris would win.
“Freedom was something I always sought in the first part of my life,” she said when Obama asked about the book’s title. “Some people think of freedom as freedom from something, freedom from responsibilities. My understanding of freedom is … that we are empowered to do something,” she said.
Merkel’s legacy has faced criticism since she left office after 16 years and Obama, while still popular with Democrats, was unable to translate that popularity into a win for Harris or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016.
Obama said Germany’s reunification after the fall of the Berlin Wall offered some lessons for a United States that was increasingly divided.
“If you can be divided literally by a wall for decades and still figure out how to come together and prosper as one identity in one country, then hopefully the – quote, unquote – ‘United States of America’ should be able to do this,” he said.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Andrea Shalal; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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