The king and his majesty, Camilla, were received with military honors at the Brandenburg Gate, the symbol of the German capital. The monarch and his queen consort were greeted by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his wife.
For the first time, a foreign ruler was officially received at the Brandenburg Gate. The event, which was broadcast live on the national public television ARD, was watched by approximately 1,500 people on the spot. Most of them were able to personally greet the guests, who walked around among the spectators after the military salute.
III. Károly’s visit lasts three days. Among other things, the monarch will visit the central reception station in Berlin for Ukrainians who fled the Russian attack and give a speech in the federal parliament (Bundestag), where already in 2020, even as heir to the throne, he spoke about wars, autocratic regimes and other forms of politically motivated violence as the main speaker of the commemoration day (Volkstrauertag) of its victims.
Photo: MTI/EPA/Getty Images/ANDREAS RENTZ / POOL
III., who was in Germany on a three-day official visit. Britain’s King Charles (s) receives a gift from an admirer during a reception outside the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on March 29, 2023
As the first program of the visit, the king and his wife met with climate protection experts and members of the German government responsible for climate protection matters at the head of state’s seat, Bellevue Palace.
Frank-Walter Steinmeier pointed out in his opening speech at the Energy Policy Turn and Sustainability event that exactly six years ago today, on March 29, 2017, Brexit, the process of terminating Britain’s membership in the European Union, began.
After six years, it is time to “open a new chapter”, underlined the German Federal President, adding that the monarch’s visit symbolizes just that. As he said, a “great personal gesture” marking the strengthening of close historical ties between Germany and the United Kingdom III. From Károly, that he is the first to visit Germany as monarch, and the theme of the first program of the visit shows that both Germany and the United Kingdom consider the fight against climate change to be “dramatically urgent”.
Climate protection also has a prominent role in the Thursday program of the British monarch, who has been dealing with the issue of protecting the environment and curbing climate change for decades; III. Károly and the German head of state will visit a local farm working with ecologically sustainable methods in Brodowin, a village in the province of Brandenburg.
First – on Wednesday evening – Frank-Walter Steinmeier will give a state banquet in honor of the guests, and on Thursday they will attend the Bundestag session together, meet with Ukrainian refugees and visit the exercises of the 900-strong joint unit of the British and German armies, the Pontoon Bridge Battalion No. 130 in Finowfurt, Brandenburg. III. On Friday, Károly and Kamilla, accompanied by the German head of state, will visit Hamburg, where, among other things, they will visit the memorial to the rescue operations organized to escape Jewish children to England in 1938-1939.
III. According to the original plans, Károly and Kamilla would have been the first to make a state visit to France. The visit planned for the days before the trip to Germany was postponed at the request of French President Emmanuel Macron.
