One of the earliest photographs of a leader from the Emirates is on display at a museum in Berlin.
Taken in February 1904 by German traveller and photographer Hermann Burchardt, it shows Sheikh Zayed bin Khalifa Al Nahyan, known as Zayed the Great, seated at a majlis outside Qasr Al Hosn and surrounded by members of his court.
The image is regarded as the first known photograph of a ruler of Abu Dhabi, although American missionary Samuel Zwemer had photographed Qasr Al Hosn three years earlier.
The Ethnological Museum in Berlin holds the original glass-plate negatives from Burchardt's visit, while digital copies are available through the UAE's Arabian Gulf Digital Archive.
President Sheikh Mohamed's visit to Germany on Wednesday, where he will meet German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Chancellor Friedrich Merz, comes more than 120 years later – and 54 years after the two countries established diplomatic relations.
Since 1972, the relationship has expanded through strategic agreements covering areas including trade and industrial sectors. Culture has developed alongside those ties, with some of the longest-running collaborations found in publishing, language education and archaeological research.
The Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, returning from September 13 to 18 for its 35th season, is one of the clearest examples, with Germany at the heart of its evolution for two decades.
Beginning in 1981 as the Islamic Book Fair, the Abu Dhabi event later drew on the expertise of its Frankfurt counterpart, whose history dates to the 15th century, through a 2006 agreement that had the two organisations jointly run the event from 2007 to 2013.
Its work in Abu Dhabi expanded the fair's rights trading network, professional meetings, and access to regional and international publishers. Germany has maintained an annual presence at the fair since 2008 and was selected as Guest of Honour for 2021 and 2022.
Juergen Boos, president and chief executive of the Frankfurt Book Fair, described the relationship between the two events as similar to “good friends”.
“We definitely have a shared history, and we have worked jointly in developing the book business in Abu Dhabi and the Middle East,” he told The National when the Guest of Honour agreement was signed in Frankfurt.
“There have been cultural presentations, but there is also an economic focus because there will be discussions about the sales of book rights and the rest.”
At this year's fair, the 20th Sheikh Zayed Book Award will honour German writer, critic and translator Stefan Weidner as the 2026 winner in the Arab Culture in Other Languages category. His German translations include works by Adonis, Mahmoud Darwish and Ibn Arabi.
The exchange goes both ways, with the Abu Dhabi Arabic Language Centre also maintaining a regular presence in Frankfurt and using the 2025 fair to launch From Kalima to the World, an initiative to translate classical and contemporary Emirati and Arab writing into other languages. Earlier efforts include a 2009 initiative under which works by six Emirati women writers were translated into German.
Music has provided another route between the two countries, particularly through Abu Dhabi's major festivals.
The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra arrived at Emirates Palace in 2008 for only its second appearance outside Europe in its then-132-year history, performing a Wagner gala during the opening weekend of Abu Dhabi Classics.
Katharina Wagner, the composer's great-granddaughter, also led a workshop for 40 participants. A decade later, Bayreuth brought Wagner's The Valkyrie to Emirates Palace under her direction, in what was billed as the festival's first opera production outside Germany.
Emirati institutions were also taking work to German audiences. Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation – the organisation behind Abu Dhabi Festival – presented works by more than 50 Emirati artists in Portrait of a Nation during Berlin Art Week in 2017.
Two years later, Abu Dhabi Festival co-produced Puccini's La Boheme at Komische Oper Berlin, bringing a UAE-backed production to German audiences.
The connection is ingrained in some of the institutions at the centre of Abu Dhabi's cultural life, including the Cultural Foundation.
In 2024, the building became one of the first structures to carry a Department of Culture and Tourism Abu Dhabi plaque, marking its place among the emirate's registered modern heritage sites. Part of its significance lies in its 1970s design by the Architects Collaborative, the American practice co-founded by German Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius.
In 2021, From Cinderella to Sindbad travelled from Berlin's Museum Island to the Cultural Foundation, featuring about 100 objects placing the Brothers Grimm and Goethe alongside Arab literary and oral traditions.
Meanwhile, Germany's permanent cultural presence had taken shape years earlier. In 2006, Steinmeier, then Germany's foreign minister, opened a joint Abu Dhabi liaison office for the Goethe-Institut, the German Academic Exchange Service and the German development agency GTZ. Goethe later opened a branch in the UAE, and continues to run language courses and cultural programmes in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.
On the big screen, the partnership is smaller but recurring. The Goethe-Institut, the German Embassy and Cinema Akil established the Gulf German Film Festival, while the children's film festival Schlingel held UAE versions in 2024 and 2025.
The bonds have also developed through decades of archaeological work in Sharjah. At Faya Palaeolandscape, inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage List in 2025, Emirati and German teams have worked together across successive excavation seasons.
Meanwhile, the University of Tubingen in south-west Germany began working with the Sharjah Archaeology Authority in 1995, and these excavations have since produced evidence central to understanding when people occupied Arabia and how early populations moved through the region.
President Sheikh Mohamed's visit to Germany is another step in a relationship that has developed over decades through institutions and long-term projects, the effects of which remain visible in both countries.
