Editorial: Do you believe in your country? That is the crucial question!

This week the time had come: for the first time, the federal government invited around 200 international investors to Germany to promote the location. The “Invest in Germany Summit” did not take place in nearly as lavish an atmosphere as its French model “Choose France” in the Palace of Versailles.

But the conference location in the heart of Berlin, the private business school ESMT in the former GDR State Council building at Schloßplatz 1, also breathes history. It is, as you read on the ESMT homepage, “a building with a second life”. Hardly any other place represents Berlin's ability to reorient itself so much.

Realignment is also what the black-red coalition wanted to sell with the investor summit - and it succeeded. There, where Erich Honecker once ruled, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil and Economics Minister Katherina Reiche gathered high-ranking business and financial figures around them. Merz's personal investment representative, former Commerzbank boss Martin Blessing, was also there.

The mood was good, the money was easy. Merz, Klingbeil and Reiche laughed in a relaxed, intimate threesome. A sight that was rare recently. The Chancellor was able to announce billions in investments in Germany - even if at the end he did not give a specific number of all promised inflows, as Emmanuel Macron celebrates every year at “Choose France”.