Chancellor Merkel’s speech before the two houses
5. November 2009
Ein Schreiben
von Günter Blobel
an Nancy Pelosi,
Sprecherin des Repräsentantenhauses
der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika
Dear Congresswoman Pelosi,
knowing that you invited Chancellor Merkel of Germany to speak on Nov 2, 2009 to both Houses, I assume that you will probably meet her personally.
Chancellor Merkel is unfortunately co-responsible for breaking international law.
In 1976, Germany signed the UNESCO world cultural heritage convention.
UNESCO, for the first time in its history, had no other choice than to withdraw this title from one of its World Cultural Heritage Sites in Germany, the Elbe Valley Dresden, in June 2009.
Chancellor Merkel made no attempt to stop her Christian Democratic Party colleagues in Dresden to give up their Rambo (Bush-like) confrontation of UNESCO and to yield to UNESCO’s warnings not to build a huge, four-lane highway bridge in the middle of the Elbe Valley World Cultural Heritage Site.
For further clarification, I include an article I wrote recently as OpEd piece for the NYT.
As German-American Nobel Laureate (Medicine 1999), I am deeply disturbed by Chancellor Merkel’s behavior in this matter and even more so that she was accorded the honor to speak to the two Houses.
I hope in your conversations with her, you will bring up this topic and remind her that Germany can ill afford to break international treaties. Only Communist- and Nazi- Germany did this.
It is still possible to convert the already constructed accesses to a bridge and use them for the construction of a tunnel and thereby solve the problem with UNESCO. And she has the power to do this!
With all the major problems the world has right now, Chancellor Merkel is obviously hoping that this offense against our common world cultural heritage will go unnoticed.
The cancellation of the Elbe Valley World Cultural Heritage title sets a terrible example for much poorer countries and may induce them to make short shrift of their cultural heritage sites as well for some short sighted economic gain. If Germany can do it, so can other countries.
I think your intervention with her therefore is timely and extremely important for the preservation of world culture.
Thank you for your consideration of my request.
With great respect for your office and best regards,
Guenter Blobel
October 14, 2009
