Political partnerships are like any other relationship: they can be marked by strong affection that has grown over the years, by jealousy or infidelity, or they can be marriages of convenience.

Against the background of reconciliation after World War II, Germany has traditionally tended to focus on France. In the late 1970s and across party lines, German Social Democratic Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and France's arch-conservative president Giscard d'Estaing were friends. Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a Christian Democrat, was close to France's Socialist President Francois Mitterrand - in a symbolic gesture of reconciliation in 1984, they clasped hands as they commemorated the dead at Verdun battlefield.

1998 brought an act of infidelity as Chancellor Gerhard Schröder travelled to London instead of Paris on his first foreign visit. "Schröder confirms close ties with London," the German daily Frankfurter Rundschau commented. An indignant French government under President Jacques Chirac frowned at this new liaison between Germany and Britain. Chirac urged Germany to give German-Franco ties "new impetus" and renew the relationship.

Significant choices

"It doesn't matter so much whether the chancellor or president believe in the significance of German-Franco friendship," said Stefan Seidendorf of the German-Franco Institute (DFI). The indignation is based on the fact that a ritual wasn't observed, he said. After all, there is only one inaugural foreign visit.

A head of government's virst trip is akin to a declaration of love; the order of state visits shows the focus of the administration's future policies. That is why the visits are significant, and that is why the French perceived Schröder's trip to London as an insult

State visits by the head of state are significant, too. When a new president takes office, he traditionally visits Germany's European neighbors - France, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, the Czech Republic and Belgium - and the EU and NATO in Brussels. In past years, German presidents have increasingly zoomed in on one partner: neighboring Poland.

Historic imperative

Poland is the country that Germany invaded at the outset of World War II, the land where the Nazi regime erected ghettos and concentration camps, where German troops mercilessly drove out and killed the population. Former President Richard von Weizsäcker, a soldier on the Russian front in World War II, said he turned to politics "because of Poland," a nation "badly violated and damaged by Germans."

But Weizsäcker travelled to Paris first, as did his predecessors.

In 2004, Horst Köhler became the first president to begin his state visits in Warsaw, when Poland had just joined the EU. Paris was second on his list. Germany's new president, Joachim Gauck, has chosen the same itinerary: his inaugural state visit takes him to Warsaw.

Traveling first to Poland was a heartfelt wish for both Köhler and Gauck. Köhler was born in the Polish town of Skierbieszow, where Germans drove out Polish farmers to settle ethnic Germans from southeast Europe, like the Köhler family, in World War II. Civil rights activist Gauck lived in communist East Germany for years. Even before he was officially elected president, Gauck made it clear he would focus on the German-Polish relationship. "Europe - and Germans above all - likes to look westward. But my nation could learn a lot right here," he told students at Lodz University.

Order of appearance

"After World War II, reconciliation was the most central issue in German-Polish policies," Dieter Bingen, director of the German-Polish Institute, told DW. Today, the spectrum has expanded: "Poland is a key EU country. Where current political issues are concerned, Germany is at times closer to Poland than to France, for instance involving ties to the neighbors to the east."

Polish prime ministers and presidents reciprocate and make their inaugural state visits to Berlin. "Ever since the end of communism, we've had opportunities to build a partnership that wasn't possible before 1989," Bingen said.

After France and Poland, there's a third country high on Germany's list of close partners: Israel.

Issues here, however, do not revolve around integration and understanding in Europe or joint economic policies; issues with Israel include peace in the Middle East and coming to terms with the Nazi past. As a rule, Israel is visited at a later date in a president's or chancellor's term of office.

Mutual decisions

In previous years, Germany's chancellors and presidents split up their inaugural state visits: chancellors travelled to France, and presidents - with the exception of Christian Wulff - to Poland. They complement each other well, according to DFI's Seidendorf: "The president is the head of state. His visit leaves no doubt as to the importance of the relationship with Poland."

At the same time, the French government is aware of the fact that power lies with the chancellor - she's the one responsible for day-to-day politics.

And Schröder's surprise detour to London? Above all, he was headed to see Tony Blair, then Britain's Prime Minister, the star of "New Labour" and new Social Democratic policies that demanded pragmatism instead of class struggle as well as a freer market instead of wealth redistribution. He represented policies that Schröder opted for, too.

As for France, Schröder never turned his back on Franco-German ties: three days after taking office, he visited Paris. And in 2004, on the 60th anniversary of the Allied Landing in Normandy, he was the first German chancellor ever to be invited to the ceremony.

Author: Monika Griebeler / db
Editor: Greg Wiser