At a special ceremony on Wednesday (10 October) the Federal Foreign Office and the German Commission for UNESCO will celebrate the inclusion of the Two plus Four Treaty of 1990 as well as other documents relating to the Berlin Wall in UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register.

The Memory of the World Certificates will be presented at a ceremony attended by Federal Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, former Federal Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and German Commission for UNESCO President Walter Hirche. On behalf of the Federal Foreign Office Foreign Minister Westerwelle will be presented with the certificate inscribing the Two plus Four Treaty in the Register, which is now kept at the Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office.

After the presentation former Federal Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former GDR Foreign Minister Markus Meckel, former GDR Prime Minister Lothar de Maizière and former State Secretary Dieter Castrup, the Federal Foreign Office representative at the treaty negotiations, will discuss how they personally experienced the negotiations in which they were all closely involved as well as their views on what led up to the treaty and why it is so important. There will also be statements from representatives of the other signatory states, the United States, Britain, France and Russia.

With its Memory of the World Programme launched in 1992, UNESCO aims to preserve and provide access to exceptional documents deemed part of humanity’s cultural and intellectual heritage. The Register currently features 245 documents from 96 countries, including 13 from Germany.