Dutch Working Visit to Germany, Day Two: Thuringia and Saxony

Today, Wednesday February 8, Their Majesties King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima started their second day of the working visit at the Thuringian State Chancellery in Erfurt were they were officially welcomed by Bodo Ramelow, Prime Minister of Thuringia, and his wife Germana Alberti vom Hofe. In the Chancellery took place an audience and the Royal Couple signed the golden book.

Afterwards the King and the Queen paid a visit to the Old Synagogue of Erfurt accompanied by the Mayor of Erfurt, Andreas Bausewein, and Professor Reinhard Schramm, Chairman of the Jewish Community of Thuringia. The synagogue, built in 1100, is the oldest surviving synagogue in Europe and in 2015 was nominated as a World Heritage Site. Since 1992 the synagogue was transformed into a museum on the culture and history of the Jewish community of Erfurt in the Middle Ages.

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— Bodo Ramelow (@bodoramelow) February 8, 2017

Later the Royal Couple made a walkabout through the famous Krämerbrücke, a medieval bridge, where they were greeted by the people gathered to meet them.

Then King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima went to the city of Weimar to visit the former Buchenwald Concentration Camp where around 56,000 people were killed during the Second World War. The Royal Couple laid white roses at the memorial that remembers the victims of the camp and made a tour of the permanent exhibition “Buchenwald, Ausgrenzung und Gewalt 1937 bis 1945”, held in the former prison camp that was opened in 2016.

In Weimar the King and the Queen also visited the “Duchess Anna Amalia Library”, a public research library for literary and cultural history with a collection focusing on German literature from the period around 1800 and the Goethe and Schiller Archives.

In the library took place a lunch during which King Willem-Alexander held a speech. The King gave thanks for the warm welcome and stressed the special bond between Germany and the Netherland.

Afterwards, in the afternoon, the Royal Couple went to Jena where they visited the “Leibniz Institute for Photonic Technologies (IPHT)”. This insitute is involved in the research about photonic and biophotonic processes and systems for questions in the fields of medicine, life sciences and environmental sciences. In the presence of the King and the Queen was signed a memorandum of cooperation in science between the University of Jena and the Dutch University of Delft.

Later the Royal Couple moved to Leipzig, Saxony, where in the evening took place a trade dinner at the congress hall of the Zoo in the presence of the Dutch business delegation and German companies and institutions.

Filed under The Netherlands
Tagged Germany, King Willem-Alexander of The Netherlands, Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, Religion, Technology, Working Visit.

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