GERMANY: Chancellor Gerhard Schröder has honoured German-born scientist Albert Einstein, 50 years after his death, as a democrat and pacifist.
The facade of Mr Schröder's chancellery in central Berlin now boasts an Einstein quote in bright red letters, 1.4 metres high: "The state is for the people, not the people for the state."
The quotation is from 1932, just before Hitler seized power and the Jewish scientist fled Germany.
Mr Schröder remarked that the quote "made militantly clear" that intolerance must never again be allowed rise in Germany, a reference to recent controversies stirred up by the neo-Nazi National Democratic Party.
On the facade of the adjacent Swiss Embassy, passers-by can now read: "Real democracy is no empty illusion." Einstein became a Swiss citizen in 1901.
A series of huge quotations will appear on other government ministries around Berlin during the coming months as Germany spends €13 million celebrating "Einstein Year" - the 100th anniversary of his special theory of relativity and the 50th anniversary of his death.
Albert Einstein was born in Ulm in 1879 but left for Switzerland in 1895 aged 17 to escape military service.
He returned to Germany in 1914, teaching in Berlin and Potsdam, but fled for good a month before Hitler seized power in 1933.
Einstein's difficult relationship with Germany has cast a shadow over this year's celebrations.
"To the end, Einstein - who again and again set himself against the most evil anti-Semitic hate-mongering - fought against the rise of the Nazis and for the defence of democracy," said Mr Schröder at the official opening of the Einstein Year celebrations.
The German government is hoping the Einstein Year will encourage children to study science and curb the brain drain of researchers to the US.
"Einstein stands for much of what this country has badly needed: the desire to puzzle over and discover things," said the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper in an editorial.