© dpa
The 80th anniversary of the end of World War II on May 8, 2025, is to be celebrated as a public holiday in Berlin. A bill for this purpose was introduced by the Senate on Tuesday.
As in 2020, Berliners would then be off work on the day of liberation from National Socialism. Before that, the House of Representatives must decide on the amendment to the public holiday law.
"Peaceful coexistence of peoples is still not a matter of course. Recent history shows that wars are not permanently excluded even in Europe," Senator for the Interior Iris Spranger (SPD) said about the initiative. The surrender of the German Wehrmacht in 1945 marked the end of World War II in Europe. Representatives of the Wehrmacht signed a document to this effect in the night of May 8-9, 1945, before the victorious powers - the United States, Great Britain, France and the Soviet Union - in the building that is now the Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.