[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 8, 2005)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E175]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 HONORING THE LITERARY AND CULTURAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF VIOLA HERMS DRATH

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                         HON. GEORGE RADANOVICH

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, February 8, 2005

  Mr. RADANOVICH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today for a very special 
occasion--to celebrate the birthday of a distinguished American who is 
an author, playwright, journalist and diplomatic advisor--Viola Herms 
Drath.
  Viola left her native Germany when she married U.S. Army Colonel 
Francis S. Drath, another great American, then Deputy U.S. Military 
Governor of Bavaria, after World War II. Prior to her marriage, Viola 
had established herself as a young playwright in Munich. Her first 
play, Farewell Isabell, a comedy, written at the age of 18 in the 
aftermath of the war, which was praised by critics, signaled the 
beginning of a long, creative career.
  As her career evolved in the United States, she became a longtime 
Washington correspondent for Handelsblatt, Germany's equivalent of the 
Wall Street Journal, and a member of the Executive Committee of the 
National Committee on American Foreign Policy. Viola's insightful 
writings have helped Americans and Germans better understand post-war 
foreign policy. One of her articles for the National Committee entitled 
``The Reemergence of the German Question'' published in 1988 proposed 
negotiations on German unification between the two German states and 
the four Allied Powers. As a foreign policy advisor of the 1988 Bush 
Presidential campaign, she helped lay the groundwork which led to the 
``2+4'' process towards German unification in 1990.
  Her biography of former German Chancellor Willy Brandt, Willy Brandt: 
Prisoner of His Past, first published in 1975, is being reissued this 
June in conjunction with the Broadway premiere of Michael Frayn's play 
``Democracy''. Dr. Henry A. Kissinger recently praised this biography 
by calling it ``a must-read for those interested in fully appreciating 
an important statesman both within his own times and beyond.''
  We are thankful to have the talents and energies of this extremely 
accomplished and talented individual. We wish her and her family many 
more birthday celebrations and all the best on this great occasion.

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