Thank you very much for inviting me to Magdeburg and to the Johanniskirche. However, as I have been busy with other matters entirely in recent months, I am very happy that I can be here with you today and that other commitments did not get in the way of my visit. I was back in Kyiv again as recently as Tuesday.
We are working hard with the possibilities available to us at European and international level to divert onto a peaceful and politically controllable path the most serious foreign policy crisis that Europe has had to face since the end of the Cold War. But Ukraine is not the only conflict keeping me busy at the current time. The war in Syria and the difficult situation in the refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan, as well as a new war in Iraq with horrifying reports of new deaths each day, need solutions.
All of you who are here today know this better than I do, and Magdeburg knows better than most cities what war means.
This city has been destroyed several times over the centuries. Five hundred years ago, Magdeburg was one of the centres of the Reformation, where world history, so to speak, was played out. Thanks to the actions of Martin Luther in , Magdeburg became Protestant. But this came at a price. Converting to Protestantism also came at a price. The people of Magdeburg spoke out in favour of conscience and against the papal church, and they took a stand. But standing up for what you believe can be dangerous and requires courage.
On imperial order the opponents of the Reformation, led by General Tilly, descended upon Magdeburg in to crush by bloody means the freedom of thought and belief that the people of Magdeburg were claiming. The city was razed to the ground and the population reduced from 35, to people. Magdeburg was the Hiroshima of the Thirty Years War β the terrible destruction of a proud and powerful city. This city is the proof that courage, intervention and swimming against the current are important, but that they sometimes come at a price.
