Berlin, a city torn apart by war, is the perfect setting for an American president preaching peace. Ronald Reagan famously stood metres away from the Brandenburg Gate and called on the Soviet Union to tear down the Wall dividing Europe. And President Kennedy used a Cold War visit to the once and future German capital to declare: “ich bin ein Berliner!”

Now Barack Obama, the presidential candidate, wants to grandstand there too. But a simmering row between the German Government and the local Berlin authorities could rob the Democratic politician of a photogenic moment at the Brandenburg Gate and derail his flagship tour of Europe this month.

The plan, Obama advisers have told Der Spiegel magazine, is to use the visit on July 24 to signal an imminent improvement in the transatlantic relationship.

"The Senator was criticised in the primaries for showing insufficient interest in Europe," said the unnamed adviser. "This visit is an answer to this criticism ... the memories of John F. Kennedy's 1963 speech are still very fresh — Berlin is a bridge between East and West."

Times Archive, 1963: Berlin goes wild over Mr Kennedy

'Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner'

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Berlin, in short, is the place to establish foreign policy credentials and make rhetorical flourishes. Somehow standing outside No 10 with Gordon Brown does not have the same resonance or filmic potential. And the pitstop in Paris is sure to fall foul of the Carla factor, with photographers going for the glamour shot, Mme Sarkozy embracing Mr Obama, rather than focusing on the chiselled statesman-in-waiting. The Senator from Chicago needs cheering crowds and they may be in short supply if, as expected, his trip takes in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is just a matter of the appropriate backdrop. Negotiations are underway between the Obama advance team and the office of the Berlin Mayor, Klaus Wowereit, to hold the speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate, close to the line that traces the route of the Berlin Wall. The newly built US embassy nestles alongside. So too does a museum honouring John F. Kennedy. If, as expected, Mr Obama is going to deliver a phrase in German (the insider tip is: "I can listen!" — “ich kann zuhoeren!”) and fling out his arms in the direction of Russia and Central Europe, then this surely is the place.

But, say advisers to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, it would be tantamount to giving the German stamp of approval to Mr Obama, an undue interference in the election campaign.

"The Brandenburg Gate is the best known and most historically significant site in Germany," said a Chancellery official, explaining why until now only elected presidents have been allowed to perform there.

So the Government would dearly like Mr Obama to find another platform, perhaps the town hall in the district of Schoeneberg where Kennedy expressed his solidarity with West Berlin. Almost everywhere else in the capital has unfortunate historical associations; the Olympic Stadium (where Hitler was enraged by the success of the black athlete Jesse Owens in the 1936 Games) has, for example, been ruled out.

Technically the decision lies with the Berlin Mayor, a flamboyant, openly gay Social Democrat, who quite relishes the idea of irritating the conservative Chancellor. The toing and froing between the various seats of power in Berlin is thus likely to continue until the last minute.

The embarrassment in Berlin masks the fact that almost every corner of the German political establishment now, with varying degrees of openness, wants Obama to win. The press call it “Obamania”. The only reservations about Mr Obama are that he may be "too idealistic" — the Germans found it very difficult to deal with another Democratic idealist, Jimmy Carter — and that he may pay no more than lip service to the principles of free trade. But in most other respects he ticks every box in the checklist of Chancellor Merkel, who has already scheduled a meeting with the senator.

John McCain, familiar to German politicians from his regular appearances at the annual Munich Security conference, once chewed out the German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier for being too placatory towards Russia. Mr Steinmeier meanwhile makes much of a recent 15-minute talk with Mr Obama. Two terms of George W. Bush, reckon German officials, have consolidated the anti-Americanism of the Germans. A President McCain, the German Government fears, would search for new enemies and continue to stoke the hostility of the Germans.

The Pew Global Attitudes Project, published last month, showed that 66 per cent of Germans had unfavourable views of the US and that China and Russia had more interest than Washington in Germany's point of view. The sheer animosity towards America was displayed recently in sneering media reviews of the new, admittedly uninspiring, US embassy building in Berlin. A serious conservative newspaper identified the building's roof terrace as a "spa and water-boarding zone", referring to US military abuse of prisoners.

Mr Obama thus comes to a Germany that nurtures unreasonably high expectations of him as the man who appears to sound the death knell of the Bush Administration.

But the fact is whoever wins the election in November will put pressure on Ms Merkel to be more active in Afghanistan and to reduce German dependency on Russian energy. Neither is possible as long as Ms Merkel is in alliance with the Social Democrats, who are deeply unhappy about further troop deployments abroad and are equally opposed to reactivating an atomic energy programme.

Both Mr McCain and Mr Obama have expressed support for the death sentence and the right to carry guns — strongly-felt German points of issue with America.

Obamania, it appears, may evaporate rather quickly if the senator ever becomes president.

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