Speech of the Prime Minister of the Czech Republic Mirek Topolánek at the opening ceremony of the "9 Gates Festival" given on 12th June 2007

I very appreciate having the opportunity to give a speech at the opening ceremony of the festival, which is a celebration of Czech-German-Jewish culture; especially because I am neither Czech nor German nor Jew. As it is known, I am Moravian Wallachian.

I think that it is not necessary to use the expression Czech-German-Jewish culture, which a very exact but rather clumsy term. Let me use the term "Prague culture", instead.

The Prague culture has Czech, German and Jewish roots and they are so interconnected that hardly anybody would dare to untwine them. And those tragedies of the last century cannot change it either.

This connection of cultures, very different but mutually inspiring cultures, made Prague a real metropolis; not a cosmopolitan metropolis, or even multicultural one, but a metropolis, which connects magically three elements, three ingredients of one civilization.

If I am to play juggle with the alchemy of numbers in the title and subtitle of the festival, I can say that nine equals to three squared. If three way lead to the top, we have in total nine variants how to get up and down. There are nine cultural combinations here, nine gates ...

The important thing for those various cultural ways is to be intersected at the top. And that definitely goes for Prague, as well. Prague is a significant point of intersection of Jewish, German and Czech culture. This festival justly belongs in here.

I will not cite any Czech German or Jewish classics in the conclusion; there are too many of them here that I could offend somebody, as some of them are still alive ...

I will limit myself to wish the festival to have as strong and perennial roots as the Jewish-German-Czech culture. I wish you it as a real Moravian Wallachian.