Berlin - Barack Obama has chosen Berlin's Victory Column as the backdrop for the major foreign policy speech of his trip to Europe - or rather circumstance and the German authorities have done so for him. The venue is the second choice for Illinois senator with an avid following in Europe and is at best an ambivalent one.
Obama would have preferred the Brandenburg Gate, but Chancellor Angela Merkel signalled her disapproval, saying through her spokesman that this historic central Berlin site was not for foreign election campaign speeches - not even for a man likely to be the next US president.
The Victory Column - or Siegessaeule - dates back to the 1860s.
The column itself is set with canon from three wars: the Prussian-Danish conflict of 1864, the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/71, in all of which Prussia was victorious.
A gilded Victoria, the Roman goddess of war, tops off the column. Berliners know her as "Goldelse" - Golden Elsie.
The Nazis inadvertently saved the column from destruction in World War II by moving it from its spot in front of the Reichstag - the home of the German parliament - to its current position on a traffic island at the centre of Berlin's huge Tiergarten park.
They also raised it from the original 51 metres to its current height of 65 metres, giving it a commanding view over central Berlin.
The French, who had not forgotten their humiliation in 1871, wanted to blow it up after World War II, but the other Allies stayed their hand.
Golden Elsie survived to play a starring role in Wim Wenders' 1987 film Wings of Desire. In 1989, she underwent restoration.
From 10 years from 1996 to 2006, she looked down on Berlin's Love Parade, a frenetic celebration of love, sex, techno music and ecstasy.
In 2006, Elsie was part of the backdrop to the Football World Cup played in Germany, and the boulevard stretching from the monument to the Brandenburg Gate 2.5 kilometres away is now in regular use as Germany's fan zone during major competitions.
She is once more in need of restoration, the gilt flaking off, the screws holding her wings rusting and the sandstone column crumbling.
Obama will be hoping the television cameras will be taking over-the-shoulder shots showing a jubilant throng in front of him stretching as far as the eye can see to the Brandenburg Gate in the distance.
For many in the United States, the gate was a symbol of the division of Europe during the Cold War, standing just inside communist East Berlin with the Berlin Wall running in front of it.
And then it became a symbol of the demise of communism, and of the reunification of Germany and of Europe as a whole.
It was against this backdrop that President Ronald Reagan called on Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 to "open this gate... tear down this wall."
A little more than two years later, the wall did in fact come down, and in 1990 Reagan returned to the site of his speech symbolically wielding a hammer to chip away at what was left.
In 1994, President Bill Clinton ended a speech at the same site with the words: "Berlin ist frei" (Berlin is free).
John F Kennedy, the US president Obama most likes to be compared with, also visited the site in 1963, although his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech was made some distance away.
These are the associations Obama would like to awaken. But the Brandenburg Gate also has a darker side to its 220-year history.
After Adolf Hitler was made chancellor in early 1933, his stormtroopers paraded through the gate with flaming torches, and it provided a backdrop to further Nazi parades over the next 12 years.
As Karsten Voigt, the German government coordinator for relations with the US, remarked to national radio this week. Finding a public site in Berlin without a "complicated history" is all but impossible.
"In Germany, given our history, there are only complex venues with a contradictory history," Voigt told Deutschlandfunk.
