Brussels, 02/02/2015 (Agence Europe) - Tributes of sadness and respect have been flooding in from European leaders following the death, in Berlin on Saturday 31 January, of Richard von Weizsäcker, President of the Federal Republic from 1984 to 1994, at the age of 94. In particular, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, paid tribute to his “friend”, whose work “made an important contribution to both German and European history.
The President of the Commission referred in particular to a speech in 1985, in which von Weizsäcker described the end of the Second World War as a “day of liberation” for the German people, and which gave him “political authority far beyond Germany's borders”. President Juncker also praised him as a “strong advocate of European integration”, quoting an interview in 2013, in which the former German President spoke of the need to shape the European institutions “in a way that we are not even tempted to think about national solutions” to solve common problems.
Richard von Weizsäcker, who was elected to Parliament in 1969 and became Mayor of Berlin in 1981, was elected President of the Republic in 1984, a position to which he was unanimously re-elected in 1989 for a further term in office.
A state funeral in his honour will be held on 11 February. (FG)