JFK Visits The Berlin Wall During His German Visit of 1963
By Gordonskene Monday Nov 09, 2009 7:30pm
(JFK - Berlin - 1963 - Bringing the message to the worlds largest group of shut-ins)
With the Cuban Missile Crisis a fresh memory only eight months earlier, President Kennedy toured Europe in the summer of 1963 and stopped in Berlin on June 26, 1963 to address a crowd of over 150,000 against the ominous backdrop of the Wall that divided the two Berlins.
"Today the proudest boast is, Ich Bin ein Berliner"
The day before, Kennedy spoke at the Assembly Hall in Frankfurt and offered a similar message.
Kennedy: “For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.”
All in all, JFK did much to bolster the confidence of the German people, in light of the increased Cold War posturing going back and forth in the divided city. Still, it wasn't until 26 years later that the Wall would finally come down.
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The greatest Presidential orator of modern times and an inspiration to all who believe in a greater good for humankind. Who knows what additional good he might have done if not assassinated?
I miss him still.
I am a Berlin.
Isn't "Ich bin ein Bewohner von Berlin" the correct sentence construction? I could be wrong, but I've always heard that this phrasing was off.
knuckledragging nitpicker....
People who are romanis go to the house?
"I am a jelly donut."?
New York, a Berliner can be a jelly donut or a person who lives in berlin!
http://urbanlegends.about.com/cs/historical/a...
Very interesting!
... but I'm still confused (rough translation: I still want to believe the jelly donut story).
I confess, I hadn't heard of the jelly donut story before. Thanks for "filling" me in!
;)
My pleasure, m'Lady.
The correct form is "Ich bin Berliner". Ich bin EIN Berliner marks him as a donut of the jelly kind.
you're really a Berlin native. If you're making the point that JFK was, Ich bin ein Berliner is indeed correct.
why not post reagan too?
because reagan did not shape the times he lived in, Kenndy did.
The one who had the courage to shape the times in reagans era was gorbatchev.
Nevermind...
The person below got the Izzard clip.
Ich Bin ein Berliner, as explained by Eddie Izzard :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mu02xUgE4k&fe...
:'-)
"I'm a Frankfurter and I'm a Hamburger"
Eddie Izzard is hilarious. Thanks, Edwin!
... was Neil Armstrong's.
The line was supposed to be "One small step for A man, one giant leap ...."
Ok, he had a really good excuse. But still ....
Communications glitch.
Oh, for the days when a president could make a semantic mistake in a foreign language and we assumed it was an honest mistake compared to the 21st century when our president wanted us to put food on our family.
That "hundreds of OBG/YNs are unable to practice their love for women all across this country."
You can hear it in the original tapes. There's a dropout at the 'a.'
You can hear the cleaned up audio here:
http://www.blogjam.com/neil_armstrong/
...where he said something in Polish that meant something like "I lust after the Polish People"?
there was no mistake.
Yes, we're all donuts.
After the speech JFK uttered the less memorable line, "...which room am I diddling Frulein Uta in?"
The wall was coming down with or without Saint Ronnie. Saint Ronnie just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Of course, Saint Ronnie had to grandstand with his B grade Hollywood actor performance of "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The wingnuts try and give Saint Ronnie all the credit with ending the cold war. If anything Saint Ronnie almost pushed us to nuclear war with the soviets. I'm just glad that senile old bastard got out of office before we all went up in flames.
He was the man who formulated US Cold War policy in the late '40s. Kennan distanced himself from the policy of fighting "hot", proxy wars later in life, but he really nailed it with his The Sources of Soviet Conduct aka The Long Telegram- a must read.
the people of Germany on both sides of the wall understood and appreciated the effort. It seems so long ago that we were seriously concerned about the USSR and Kruschev and missiles in Cuba.
And, jelly doughnuts.
Ah, the good old days >>>!
That speech was given in front of West Berlin City Hall in the Schoenberg section of the city. That is no longer the city hall as it moved back to the one in the eastern side of the city after the wall came down. While he was there I'm sure he visited the wall.
Your caption is inaccurate. Kennedy spoke at Rathaus Schoeneberg (Schoeneberg City Hall) -- that's the big red stone building behind him in the picture. There's a plaque on the building today where he spoke. It's close to where Bowie and Iggy lived when they moved to berlin a decade later, but it's not close to the Wall, which was a couple of miles away at the nearest point (I'm guesstimating--)over at Potsdamer Platz.
Doesn't change your point, just the caption.
The photo and the caption weren't correct. So I changed the caption. I had limited photo choices in a limited space of time - thanks for pointing it out.
"I am a jelly donut!"
Gorbachev had just made an announcement that he was ready to normalize relations between East and West Germany. Almost immediately, the German people took the wall with slegehammers. News got back to Moscow that the people were tearing down the wall, and instead of sending in the troops, Gorbachev let them continue.
Today we are all doughnuts!
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