BERLIN -- The new U.S. Embassy is finally taking its place on the Berlin skyline. An enormous crane cuts across the view of the Brandenburg Gate at Pariser Platz, triumphantly testifying to the Phoenix rising from the ashes of World War II, not far from the spot where the Nazis seized Germany.
Like everything else in Berlin, the new embassy bears witness to history. Along with other buildings on the square, it occupies space in what was "no man's land" between East and West Berlin. A block away, the bunker where Hitler died lies permanently sealed underground, the tomb of the Third Reich, and only a block away in another direction stands the new Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. When it's finished, the American Embassy will again be part of Berlin's diplomatic quarter, a short walk to the British, French and Russian embassies, the three nations that exerted such influence on postwar Germany.
Work on the embassy had been delayed when the war on terror required a wider security buffer than originally planned. The design now includes the latest anti-terrorist security barriers. Washington and Berlin hassled over every architectural change for years, reflecting the recent troubled relationship between the two countries.
The optimists believe American-German relations will improve under Chancellor Angela Merkel, who supported the war in Iraq before coming to power, but it's been a bumpy ride since her election. She complains about CIA "ghost flights" transporting terror suspects to prisons in Europe, and the American imprisonment of a Lebanese-born German citizen who was arrested, "mistakenly," as a suspect in the 9/11 attacks.
Last week it was our turn for anger. Germany released a Lebanese prisoner who was one of the hijackers of the TWA jet seized in Athens 1985. He was convicted of beating an American sailor to death. He was released several years short of serving his full term, and the release looks suspicious, coming as it does days before the release of Susanne Osthoff, a German archaeologist, by thugs who took her hostage in Iraq. Germany says there was no deal, but almost nobody believes that. The family of the murdered American is outraged, and we should be, too. The incident will no doubt be in the discussion when the new chancellor meets President Bush in Washington early in January.