German Chancellor Angela Merkel's address _ Harvard Commencement 2019

I am delighted to be here today and would like to tell you about some of my own experiences. This ceremony marks the end of an intensive and probably also hard chapter in your lives. Now the door to a new life is opening. That's exciting and inspiring. The Germany writer, Hermann Hessehas some wonderful words for such a situation in life. I'd like to quote him and then continue in my native language.
Hermann wrote: “In allbeginningdwells a magic force for guarding us and helping us to live.”
These words by Hermann inspired me when I completed my physics degree at the age of 24. That was back in 1978. The world was divided into East and West, and it was in the grips of the Cold War.
I grew up in east Germany in the GDR (German Democratic Republic), the part of my country that was not free at that time, in a dictatorship. People were oppressed and under state surveillance.Political dissidents were persecuted.
The east Germany government was afraid that thepeople would flee to freedom. And that's why it built the Berlin Wall.A wall made of concrete and steel.Anyone caught trying to overcome it was arrested or shot dead.This wall which cut Berlin in half, divided people and divided families. My family was also divided.
My first job after college was as a physicist at the Academy of Sciences in east Berlin. I lived near the Berlin Wall. I walked towards it everyday on my way home from my institute. Behind it, laid west Berlin.Freedom.
And everyday, when I was very close to the wall, I had to turn away at the last minute in order to head towards my apartment. Everyday I had to turn away from freedom at the last minute. I don’t know how often I thought I just couldn’t take it anymore. It was so frustrating. I was not a dissident. I didn't run up and bang against the wall.Nor, however, did I denied its existence for I didn't want to lie to myself.
The Berlin Wall limited my opportunities, it quite, literally, stood in my way. However, there was one thing which this wall couldn't do during all of those years. It couldn't impose limits on my inner thoughts. My personality, my imagination, my dreams and desires, prohibitions or coercion couldn't limit any of that.
Then came 1989, a common desire for freedom unleashed incredible forces throughout Europe. In Portland, in Hungry, at Czechoslovakia,as well as in east Germany, hundreds of thousands of people dared to take to the streets. The People deomonstrated and brought down the Wall. Something which many people, including myself, would not have belive possible become reality. Where there was once only a dark wall, a door suddenly opened. For me, too, the moment had came to walk through that door.
I no longer had to turn away from freedom at the last minute. I was able to cross this borderand venture out into the great wide open.
During these months 30 years ago, I experienced firsthand that nothing has to stay the way it is.This experience, dear graduates, is the first thought I want to share with you today for your future.
Anything that seems to be set in stone or inalterable can, indeed, change. In matters, both large and small, it holds the truth that every change begins in the mind.
My parents' generation discovered this in a most painful way. My father and mother were born in 1926 and 1928. When they were as old as most of you here today, the betrayal of all civilized values that was Shoah and World War II had just ended.
My country Germany had brought unimaginable suffering on Europe and the world.The victors and the defeated could easily have remained irreconcilablefor many years. But instead, Europe overcame centuries-old conflicts. A peaceful order based on common values rather than supposed national strength emerged.
Despite all the discussions and temporary setbacks, I firmly believed that we Europeans have united for the better.And the relationship between Germans and Americans, too, demonstrates how former wartime enemies can become friends.
It wasGeorgeC.Marshall, who gave a crucial contribution to this for the plan he announced at the Commencement ceremonies in 1947, in this very place.
The Trans-Atlantic partnership based on values such, as democracy and human rights, has given us an era of peace and prosperity of benefit to all sides which was lasted for more than 70 years now. And today, it will not be long now before the politicians of my generation are no longer the subject of the exercising leadership program, and at most will be delt with in leadership in history.
Harvard class of 2019, your generation will be faced with the challenges of the 21 century in the coming decades. You are among those will lead us into the future.
Protectionism and trade conflicts jeopardize freeinternational trade, and that's the very foundations of our prosperity.The digital transformation affacts allfacets of our lives.Wars and terrorism lead to displacement and force migration. Climate change poses a threat to our planet’s natural resources.It and the resulting crisis are caused by humans.Therefore, we can and must do everything humanly possible to truly master this challenge to humankind.
It is still possible, however each and everyone of us must play our part. And I say this with a measure of self-criticism, get better.
I will, therefore, to do everything in my power to ensure that Germany, my country, will achieve climate neutrality by 2050.
Changes for the better are possible if we tackle them together. If we want to go it alone, we could not achieve much.
The second thought I want to share with you is, therefore, more than ever, our way of thinking and our actions have to be multilateral rather than unilateral, global rather than national, outward looking rather than isolationist. In short, we have to work together rather than alone.
You dear graduates will have quite different opportunities to do this in future than my generation did. After all, your smart phone probably has considerably more processing power than the copy of an IBM main frame computer manufactured in the Soviet Union, which I was allowed to use for my dissertation in East Germany in 1986.
Today we use artificial intelligence, for example, to search through millions of images for symptoms of diseases in order among other things to better diagnose cancer.
In future, empathetic robots could help doctors and nurses to focus on the individual needs of patients. We cannot predict today which applications will be possible. However, the opportunities it brings are truly breathtaking.
Class of 2019, how we use these opportunities will be largely up to you as graduates.You are the ones who will be involved in deciding how our approach to how we work, communicate, get about indeed our entire way of life will develop.
As Federal Chancellor, I often have to ask myself: am I doing the right thing? Am I doing something because it is right, or simply because it’s possible? That is something you, too, need to keep asking yourself.
And that is the third thought I wish to share with you today.Are we laying down the rules for technology, or is technology dictating how we interact? Do we prioritize people as individuals with a human dignity with all the manifestsor do we see them merely consumers, data sources, objects of surveillance? These are difficult questions.
I have learned that we can find good answers even to difficult questions if we always try to view the world through the eyes of others, if we respect other people's history, traditions, religion and identity, if we hold fast to our inalienable values and act in accordance with them, and if we don't always act on our first impulses, even when there is pressure to make a snap decision. But instead, take a moment to stop, be still, think, pause. Granted that certainly takes courage.
Above all, it calls for truthfulness in our attitudes towards others. And perhaps most importantly, it calls for us to be honest with ourselves.
What better place to begin to do so than here, in this place, where so many young people from all over the world come to learn, research, and discuss the issues of our time under the maxim of truth.
That requires us not to describe lies as truth and truth as lies. It requires us not to accept shortcomings as our normality. Yet, what dear graduates could stop you? What could stop us from doing that?
Once again, the answer is walls. Walls in people's minds, walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness.
They exist between family members, as well as between groups within the society; between people of different skin colors, nations and religions. I would like us to see break down these walls. Walls that keep preventing us from envisioning of the world in which together we want you to live.
Whether we manage to do that is up to us.That's why my fourth thought, for my dear graduates, to consider is this: nothing can be taken for granted.
Our individual liberties are not given, democracy is not something we can take for granted. Neither is peace, and neither is persperity. But if we break down the walls that hem us in, if we step out into the open and have the courage to embrance new beginnings, everything is possible.
Walls can collapse, dictatorship can disappear. We can hold global warming, we can eradicate starvation, we can eliminate diseases, we can give people ,especially girls, access to education, we can fight the courses of displacement and force migration. We can do all of that.
So let's not stop by asking what isn't possible or focusing on what has always been that way. Let's start by asking what is possible and looking for things that have never been done like that before.
This is exactly what I said to the Bundestag, the German Parliment in 2005, in my first policy statement as newly elected Chancellorof the Federal Republic of Germany and the first woman to hold this office.
And I want to use precisely these words to share with you my fifth thought.
Let us suprise usselves by showing what is possible. Let us suprise ourselves by showing what we are capable of.
In my own life, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall that allowed me almost 30 years ago to step out into the open. A that point, I left my work as the scientist behind me and enter politics. That was an exciting and magical time. Just as your lives will be exciting and magical. But I also experienced moments of doubt and worry. For at that time we all knew what lay behind us, but not what might lie ahead. Perhaps that reflects a little how you, too, are feeling today, admidst all the joy of this occassion.
The sixth thought I also want to share with you is this: the moment when you step out into the open is also a moment a risk taking.
Letting go of the old is part of the new begining. There is no beginning without an end, no day without night, no life without death.
Our whole life consists of the diferences. The space between beginning and ending. It is what lies in between that we call life and experiences.
I believe that time and time again, we need to be prepared to keep bringing in things to an end, in order to feel the magic of new beginning, and to make the most of opportunities.
That's what I learned as a student, as a scientist, and it is what I experience now in politics. And who knows what life will bring after my time as a politician. That, too, is completely open. Only one thing is clear, it will, again, be something different and something new.
That's why I want to leave these wishes with you:
Tear down walls of ignorance and narrow-mindedness, for nothing has to stay as it is.
Take joint action in the interest of the multilateral global world.
Keep asking yourselves:Am I doing something because it is right, or simply because it’s possible?
Don't forget, that freedom is never something that can be taken for granted.
Surprise yourself with what is possible.
Remember that openness always involves risks.Letting go of the old is part of the new begining.
And above all, nothing can be taken for granted. Everything is possible.