Klaus Doring

Sunday, January 20, 2008

Philippine-German Relations (XV)

“The dawn is not far. Spain opens the east for her beloved Philippines, and times are changing, and I am positive that more are being done than we imagine.” - Dr. Jose Rizal, Philippines.

To be honest, I really got surprised at the first time to learn and know everything about Jose Rizal and his relations to Germany. We can subscribe Rizal as Initiator of Philippine-German Cultural Relations.

After considering the diplomatic exchange of the British and the Spanish government inManila, we now turn to individual Filinos, who established a cultural link between Germany and the Philippines.

One of the first Filipinos who admired the Germans in the Philippines and abroad was indeed Jose Rizal, the Philippines’ national hero. More than anybody else, it was he, who “initiated the cultural relations between the Philippines and Germany and the German-speaking scholars, as Dr. Cecilio Lopez stressed in “Rizal and the Beginning of German-Philippine Cultural Relations” (”The Joint Enterprise”, Manila, Rizal Publishing House, p. 30).

(To be continued!)

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