SOMETHING SPECIAL: A German guest at the Unity Day celebrations on Monday evening. Picture by Amit Datta

Circa 1851. The Royal Prussian authorities establish an honorary consulate for British India in Calcutta.

Circa 1857. It is taken over by the North German Federation and eventually in 1871, by the German Reich. The Bengal Presidency, the province of Oudh, including the native states in this area, are put under the jurisdiction of this consulate.

Circa 1885. A consulate-general with German career diplomats for British India and the colony Ceylon is established in Calcutta.

Fast forward to 2004 and the legacy of a special bond with the city is very much alive, as the ?upbeat tempo? at the Day of German Unity marked on Monday evening at a city star hotel testifies.

Like in other German diplomatic missions elsewhere, the Unity Day function in Calcutta commemorates the erstwhile GDR?s accession to the territory of the Federal Republic in front of Berlin?s Reichstag on October 3, 1990, after the Wall fell on November 9 the previous year.

?Yes, the mood in the city at the moment is one of infectious optimism, and the warmth of the (Unity Day) evening reflects this,? observes Erhard Zander, the 16th German consul-general in town, ?pleasantly surprised? at the handsome turnout of young German students on the occasion.

Zander, however, feels Calcutta?s reputation in the West and its reality still don?t match and the time is ripe for the city to translate the buoyancy in the air into more concrete steps ahead. ?The world is willing to cooperate with and listen to Calcutta, and the city must seize the initiative to make things happen,? he adds.

The city consulate office, which once had ?to observe and report on the political situation and the economic development? of entire India, is encouraged by the increased traffic of business people to Germany from the city over the past couple of years. A sharp-focus business delegation from Germany touching down in Calcutta in February is expected to carry forward the momentum in IT and food processing.

In the past, the German consuls-general in town used to follow the viceroy and the government authorities to the summer residence of Simla during the hot season. But the staff at 1, Hastings Park Road, Alipore, which houses the consulate office since 1971, would rather go to Murshidabad or the Sunderbans.

?Both the areas have tremendous potential to develop as global tourist destinations if infrastructure can be upgraded. Simple hotels sans frills, with clean rooms and toilets, besides good communication, should do the trick,? the consul-general says.

On its part, the city consulate office, with jurisdiction over West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and the Northeast and covering approximately 674,000 sq km and 280 million inhabitants, is keen to boost people-to-people ties. While groups of German doctors and nurses stay and work in the west bank by rotation, film-makers and musicians engage their focus in town, efforts are on to extend cooperation to other areas as well. A clutch of events linked to Unity Day is also being pondered.

The few metres of Bernauer Strasse separating old West and East Berlin still divide worlds in Germany, say some political observers. However, Calcutta, where the German consulate was re-established after World War II on March 20, 1954, and given the status of a consulate-general in September the same year, seems to be undivided in embracing the extended arm of camaraderie.