"There are people who risk their lives for society, and they simply deserve a certain amount of appreciation and recognition," David Hallbauer says.

He was a soldier deployed abroad and now serves as deputy chairman of the Association of German Deployment Veterans (BDV). The organization has been campaigning for an official Veterans Day in Germany for years.

On Sunday, June 15, it will get its wish when military veterans will be honored for the first time with a large civic celebration at the Reichstag parliamentary building in Berlin and other events nationwide.

Hallbauer is delighted. "In other countries, this is a matter of course, but it hasn't been established here at all until now," he says.

There are obvious historical reasons as to why a culture of appreciation for veterans is only now developing in Germany. The tradition of celebrating war veterans ended with the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War.

The Nazi's so-called Heroes Memorial Day was abolished and replaced by a national day of mourning. After the Wehrmacht, the Nazi's unified armed forces, was disbanded, Germany had no army at all for a decade. Veterans' associations were also banned during this time.

Even after the Federal Republic of Germany founded its military, the Bundeswehr, in 1955, no new veterans tradition initially developed. This began to change in the 1990s when more German soldiers were deployed........

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