2023-06-26 14:51:03
In 1963, the then US president made a historic visit to Berlin. Two years after the wall was built, his speech with the famous phrase “ich bin ein Berliner” raised hopes for an end to the division.
The visit of the then President of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was eagerly awaited in Germany in June 1963. Diplomatic relations with the United States had suffered since he took office in 1961, in particular because of the decision to to act with restraint towards the Soviet Union – a political decision whose consequences were felt directly in Berlin.
Even so, there was a huge uproar during the American’s arrival in the former West Berlin, on the fourth day of his visit to Germany, after passing through Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Cologne and the then capital, Bonn. More than a million people cheered the president on June 26, 1963.
Kennedy was a bastion of hope. His official visit took place on the 15th anniversary of the start of the airlift that transported supplies to the isolated city – a mission for which the people of Berlin showed their gratitude.
With the so-called Berlin blockade, the Soviet Union broke the supply lines to the western side of the city on June 24, 1948. With that, Moscow aimed to gain power over the part occupied by the Western Allies after World War II. But, on the same day, the Allies, led by the Americans, created the airlift, through which military planes – nicknamed by Berliners Rosinenbomber (raisin grape bombers) – supplied the city of more than 2 million inhabitants.
hope and gratitude
(Foto: Consolidated Robert Knudsen/dpa/picture-alliance)
The nickname given to the planes came about because, before landing, the crews threw small packages with sweets, gum and raisins to the children who were waiting for them. The blockade lasted until May 12, 1949.
When Kennedy arrived in Berlin, the political situation had taken on an unexpected turn. West Berlin was surrounded by a wall. Berliners associated the American’s visit with hope for freedom and an end to the division that separated family and friends. His presence was a sign that the US would not abandon the city.
Until then, there were some doubts about this. In August 1961, newly elected President Kennedy did not intervene when the Soviet Union began construction on the Berlin Wall. Historians estimate that the American feared the danger of a nuclear war and considered Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev unpredictable.
Before his famous speech in front of the city hall in Schöneberg, which at the time was the official residence of the mayor of Berlin and future German chancellor Willy Brandt, Kennedy held a triumphal parade through the city in an open car, alongside Brandt and the then chancellor Federal, Konrad Adenauer, being cheered by the crowd.
Inspired by Ancient Rome
(Foto: AP Photo/picture alliance)
After a stop at the Brandenburg Gate and the historic Checkpoint Charlie border post, where American and Soviet tanks came face to face in the fall of 1961, the parade arrived at City Hall around 1pm.
On a stage erected in front of the building’s entrance, Kennedy thanked Adenauer and Brandt and paid tribute to US General Lucius D. Clay, who served as military governor of the US occupation zone in Berlin and was responsible for the airlift, the which the president was applauded effusively.
Kennedy then uttered the phrase that went down in the history books: “Today, in the free world, the proudest sentence anyone can say is: ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (I am a Berliner).” The crowd cheered and responded to chants of “Kennedy, Kennedy”. And a banner was erected with the question: “When will the wall fall?”
When pronouncing the historic phrase, Kennedy was referring to the Roman philosopher and politician Marco Cicero, who coined the expression “I am a Roman”. Whereas Cicero wanted to highlight that the inhabitants of Rome enjoyed special rights, Kennedy’s intention was to express unbounded solidarity with West Berlin.
The idea of using the phrase in the speech would have come from Kennedy himself a few days earlier at the White House, who would initially say it in English, but it ended up being left out of his speechwriter’s manuscript. On the way to Berlin, Kennedy wrote down the phonetic transcription of the German words to pronounce them correctly: “Ish bin ein Bearleener”.
“We never needed a wall to contain our citizens”
In his speech, the American highlighted West Berlin as an island of freedom full of willpower. Anyone who claimed that communism posed no danger, or that it was the political system of the future, should come to Berlin, he said.
“Freedom has many difficulties, and democracy is not perfect. But we never had to build a wall to contain our citizens, to keep them from leaving us,” said the president.
The construction of the wall was the Soviet Union’s reaction to the mass exodus of citizens from the former East Germany (German Democratic Republic, GDR). It is estimated that 2.8 million people left the GDR for West Germany between 1949 and 1961, due to political persecution or lack of economic prospects.
Kennedy mentioned the fate of families separated by the construction of the wall, and he repeated the historic phrase at the end of his speech. “All free men, wherever they live, are citizens of Berlin. Therefore, as a free man, I am proud of these words: ‘I am a Berliner’.”
Kennedy was assassinated the same year as his visit to Germany, on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. The facts behind the attack have not yet been clarified. Numerous files on the case are kept confidential.
After Kennedy’s visit, it still took 26 years for the Berlin Wall to come down.
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