Gutknecht

seeks to

restore relations

with Germany

Congressman hopes

to bring German

lawmakers to New Ulm

By RON LARSEN

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- U.S. Rep. Gil Gutknecht stopped in New Ulm Saturday to tell about his work in trying to improve recently deteriorating relations with Germany, as well as plans to bring a delegation of German lawmakers to New Ulm.

Gutknecht, who is seeking re-election to Congress from the 1st District, said he feels that "a lot of people don't know how involved I am with Germany."

He's vice chair, and would be the next chairman if re-elected, of the Congressional Study Group on Germany. He has two staff members who speak, read and write "perfect German," and they read the German newspapers.

"So, we stay very involved in German relations," Gutknecht said. "The ambassador calls me or calls my office, or somebody from the embassy, if they've got a question or a problem. I've gotten to know Ambassador (Gerhard) Ischinger pretty well."

So well, in fact, that Gutknecht was the second-ranking American official invited to Germany's Washington embassy for dinner on Oct. 3, the country's Unification Day.

"It's a big holiday to the Germans," he said.

He's also made several trips to Germany, has friends in the Bundestag, Germany's lower house and similar to the U.S. House of Representatives, only much larger with 662 members, and meets with members on a regular basis.

"I told them about New Ulm, and that I think New Ulm is the only city in America that has a free-standing Glockenspiel. They think that's fascinating, but what they really find fascinating is the statue of Hermann the German," Gutknecht said.

"Every elementary student in Germany has to learn the story of Hermann the German. He is a national hero; in fact, this is a bigger deal in some respects in Germany than it is to people in New Ulm. So we're going to try to get a delegation over here; in fact, we may even have a small delegation coming in December. I'm going to try to bring them down here so they can actually see the statue of Hermann," Gutknecht said.

Gutknecht said relations soured when Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder began using anti-war and anti-American rhetoric to barely win in the German elections on Sept. 22.

"So, since then, the relationship between the United States and Germany has been incredibly cool," he said.

Gutknecht said Ischinger has asked him what can be done to improve the relationship.

"I said, I don't know what you can do right now. I don't know President Bush real well, but I know him pretty well, and this is not a guy that's going to forget because one of Schroeder's officials in their Justice Department compared Bush to Hitler."

Gutknecht said he's also one of the few Americans to see the secret laboratory on the Baltic Sea where German scientists developed the V2 rockets and fired them at England during World War II.

"It's a camp that the Germans would like to forget about. The interesting thing is how little we knew about it before we liberated Germany," he said. "We did not know, for example, that they were also working on a multi-stage rocket to hit the United States. If we had waited another two years to get involved in World War II, they probably would have had a multi-stage rocket, jet airplanes and a nuclear weapon."