He returned to Washington today, but last Thursday, he spent his evening at InterFace in Unterhaching on our IF forum: Klaus Kastan. As most of our readers certainly know, Klaus is the foreign correspondent of BR and ARD in Washington, from where he reports from the White House on German radio and TV.
After Heribert Prantl (SZ) and Wolfgang Herles (ZDF), Klaus was the last orator in the IF forum of 2009 on “60 Years of German Federal Republic”.
Besides bringing hilarious photos from Washington, such as Mr. Bush and Mrs. Merkel walking hand in hand, he also brought interesting news. After the introduction by our sales director Maximilian Buchberger, he really got into the spirit.
To be sure, the great interviews by Obama are not necessarily given to BR or ARD (Spiegel would be a more likely candidate), but as “palace spokesman”, he does have his sources. Which is the reason why he treated his audience to some insider knowledge.
Naturally, Obama’s health reform program was a central topic. Klaus Kastan underlined the importance of this reform for America and gave some drastic examples involving of his personal experience.
He told us how the Americans had left our Chancellor stranded with the Opel deal, how the surprise Peace Nobel Prize award to Obama had caused a long night for many Washington journalists including himself and how the euphoria around this prize has ebbed down already.
The (non-)reachability of the climate goals were an issue, as was the standard of living and the safety of a German reporter in the USA. It was also interesting to hear how the popularity of Americans in the eyes of Germans was hugely influenced from negative to positive by the change of presidents in the USA, whereas the popularity of Germans in the USA was hardly touched at all.
There were many questions and a long discussion followed during the subsequent “American Buffet”. Most of the audience continued to be drawn by the exciting topic for quite some time, discussing everything with passion in our new InterFace kitchen and eating hotdogs and wraps.
Our moderator Maximilian Buchberger and the InterFace organisation team were happy about the IF forum again having made for a special evening with many satisfied guests.
Many thanks to the colleagues!
And I look forward to the three IF forums scheduled for the year 2010, starting with Frau Prof. Dr. Kathrin Möslein (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg) and Frau Gabriele Fischer (Brandeins).
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
Of course, the pictures were again taken by our IF blog photographer Rolo Zollner!
Loading ...