As of: February 15, 2024, 2:18 p.m
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Chancellor Olaf Scholz gives a press conference in the Federal Chancellery.
© Kay Nietfeld/dpa/archive image
The Matthiae meal in Hamburg is considered the oldest still taking place feast in the world.
Traditionally, important guests of honor are invited.
This year too there will be important visitors.
Hamburg - Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who has been on a Russian wanted list since the beginning of the week, are this year's guests of honor at the traditional Matthiae meal in Hamburg City Hall.
They are scheduled to speak on Tuesday evening in the large ballroom in front of around 400 representatives from politics, business, science and culture as well as the entire consular corps, as the Senate of the Hanseatic city announced on Thursday.
The Matthiae meal has been historically documented since 1356 and is therefore considered the oldest still celebrated feast in the world.
Traditionally, in addition to the First Mayor, a foreign and a German guest of honor speak.
Kallas has ruled Estonia since 2021. She is also resolutely committed to European values in view of the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine, the Senate explained the invitation.
Her visit is also intended to deepen Hamburg's relations with Estonia.
Because of its port, Hamburg has had shipping and foreign trade connections with the Baltics for centuries.
As a largely digitalized country, Estonia is a good partner in the development and implementation of digital infrastructure and cybersecurity.
Russia put Kallas and other high-ranking politicians from the Baltic states on a wanted list earlier this week.
The Russian authorities accuse them of demolishing Soviet war memorials in their own countries.
In the summer of 2022, a few months after the start of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, Estonia demolished a Soviet war memorial - a replica of a T-34 tank with a red star - in Narva on the border with Russia.
There were isolated protests in the city against this.
Kallas said at the time: “We will not give Russia the opportunity to use the past to disturb the peace in Estonia.”
The Matthiae meal was the scene of Russian-Estonian disputes 30 years ago and led to the only scandal in the long history of the banquet.
The then Estonian President Lennart Meri warned in his speech in 1994 that the Russians wanted to take control of the East again.
This outraged the then deputy mayor of Hamburg's twin city, St. Petersburg, who was invited as a guest, so much that he threw the napkin onto the banquet table and marched out of the hall in a rage.
His name: Vladimir Putin.
Prime Minister Kallas and Chancellor Scholz are on the same page when it comes to dealing with Ukraine.
It was only at the end of January that Scholz, Kallas and the Prime Ministers of the EU countries Denmark, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic, Mette Frederiksen, Mark Rutte and Petr Fiala, advocated for long-term military support for Ukraine in a joint opinion piece.
Ukraine's continued will to fight is an inspiration for all who value freedom and justice, the five heads of government wrote in the Financial Times.
It is already the second Matthiae meal in which the Ukraine war takes up a lot of space.
Last year, the NATO Supreme Commander in Europe, General Christopher Cavoli, and the Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Helga Maria Schmid, were guests of honor at the town hall.
dpa