Lawmakers Bid Farewell to Bonn

The German Parliament bid an emotional goodbye to Bonn after 50 years while saying hello to the country’s eighth postwar president, Johannes Rau, and looking forward to the government’s return to Berlin. Rau received a warm welcome from thousands of Bonn residents who braved stormy weather to stand in the city’s central market square. In his own sentimental goodbye to the city, former Chancellor Helmut Kohl looked back at his greatest triumph--German reunification--and ahead to the move to Berlin, declaring that city the nation’s rightful capital. His successor, Gerhard Schroeder, ceded center stage to Kohl during Parliament’s last debate in the provincial Rhine River town, underlining his eagerness to leave Bonn behind and start governing from Berlin in the fall.