Stump the German

[Eva Elisabeth]

And I second former German chancellor and West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt who pledged that "a war must never again begin from German soil".

In 1959, (when Mayor of West Berlin) Willy Brandt was invited to give the key commemoration speech at the sesquicentennial banquet of the A. Lincoln Society in Springfield, as he was destined for a major role in a "House Divided" episode of the 20th century. In his address, he focused on the House Divided speech and related it to the situation and developments in both parts of Germany then.

About the Freedom Bell in the townhall of Berlin-Schöneberg that had been dedicated to the citizens in 1950, Brandt said in his address:
"Since shortly after the end of the Berlin blockade the Freedom Bell has hung in the town hall of West Berlin. It came to us from your country with parchment scrolls bearing the signatures of fifteen thousand American men and women. Each day at I2 noon we the listen to sound of this bell, which reminds us of what we have to preserve and what we yet have to achieve...Engraved on our Freedom Bell are noble words from the Gettysburg Address: "That this World - Lincoln said 'nation,' but today he, too, would include the whole world -under God shall have a new birth of freedom."

Brandt later canvassed with a photo of him at the speakers table in front of the "House Divided banner".