Description
On June 26, 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy stood on the steps of the Rathaus Schöneburg in West Berlin and delivered one of the most famous - and infamous - speeches of his presidency. Before a gathered crowd of 450,000 people, Kennedy railed against East Germany’s construction of the Berlin Wall two months before, extolled the virtues of democracy and self-government, and pledged his unwavering support for the people of West Berlin:
“I know of no town, no city, that has been besieged for 18 years that still lives with the vitality and the force, and the hope and the determination of the city of West Berlin…
Lasting peace in Europe can never be assured as long as one German out of four is denied the elementary right of free men, and that is to make a free choice.
You live in a defended island of freedom, but your life is part of the main…Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”
Then, in a final, powerful statement of solidarity, he closed his speech with the iconic words:
“All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner”.
If you have ever heard of this speech, then you probably know what happened next: instead of cheering, the crowd broke into mocking laughter. Thanks to an unfortunate combination of bad grammar and cultural ignorance, the President had just declared himself to be not a fellow resident of Berlin but rather a “Berliner”, a type of jelly-filled doughnut. Whoopsy doodle.
…only no, he didn’t. While this story has been repeated countless times over the past six decades and become a popular and quirky bit of JFK lore, there is little evidence that any German listening to Kennedy’s speech that day would have understood his final words as meaning “I am a jelly doughnut.” So how, then, did this amusing - if ultimately false - urban legend get started? It all has to do with the intricacies of German grammar, lazy journalism, and our age-old tendency to not let the truth get in the way of a good story. This is the story of one of the most misunderstood speeches of the Cold War....
Author: Gilles Messier
Host: Simon Whistler
Editor: Daven Hiskey
Producer: Samuel Avila