BERLIN, Germany (M. Jackson Fans Website) -
Michael Jackson was honored
Thursday as "pop artist of the millennium" at a gala in Berlin, capping a German visit that was overshadowed by a furor after the star held his baby son over a fourth-floor railing at his hotel.
"Berlin, ich liebe dich" - "Berlin, I love you" - Jackson said in German to the crowd of hundreds of invited guests after he received the special Bambi award from three-time Wimbledon tennis champion Boris Becker. "A city so full of energy - it's very special to me."
Jackson, dressed in a glittering black jacket and black pants, lifted aloft the award statuette - a silver deer - and blew a kiss to the crowd after shyly donning reading glasses for a brief acceptance speech in which he urged the children of Germany to "work for your dreams, work for your ideals."
"We are Christians, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu, we are black, we are white, we are a community of some many differences, so complex and yet so simple," he said. "We do not need to have war."
His stay began Tuesday and soon ran into controversy when he appeared at his hotel window with the youngest of his three children, Prince Michael II, and briefly held him over the railing.
London and New York tabloids were particularly blistering, labeling Jackson a "Wacko" and a "Mad Bad Dad" - even demanding his arrest for reckless endangerment.
But Berlin prosecutors said no crime had been committed. Police spokesman Klaus Schubert said no formal complaint had been filed and it was "unlikely" that any investigation would be opened.
In a written statement Tuesday night, Jackson said he had made a "terrible mistake," but stressed that "I would never intentionally endanger the lives of my children."
Jackson, wearing a surgical mask, made fleeting appearances at the window Thursday - throwing kisses, waving V for victory and thumping his hand over his heart. Later, he could be seen through the hotel room's half-drawn curtains holding in his arms a child with its face shielded by a white cloth.
Devoted fans who kept vigil outside Jackson's hotel Thursday shrugged aside the row, which Jackson didn't mention at the ceremony.
"Michael doesn't work with the press, and therefore the press tries to take revenge on him," said Marcel Reinhardt, 27, from the east German state of Thuringia.
On Wednesday, he took his two elder children, Prince Michael, 5, and Paris, 4, to visit gorillas at the Berlin Zoo and later auctioned off a jacket he wore to the American Music Awards last January for about $16,000.
