However, it was universally known as the Berlin Wall and its real purpose was to keep East German citizens from escaping to the West. The East German authorities argued that it was meant to prevent spies and agents of West Germany from crossing into the East. In 1961, the East German government under Walter Ulbricht erected a barbed-wire barrier around West Berlin, officially called the antifaschistischer Schutzwall ( anti-fascist protective barrier). Hundreds of thousands of East Germans defected to the West via West Berlin, a labour drain that threatened East Germany with economic collapse. Starting in 1952, the border between East and West was closed everywhere but in Berlin. Afterward, the sectors controlled by the NATO Allies became an effective exclave of West Germany, completely surrounded by East Germany. Initially governed in four sectors controlled by the four Allied powers (United States, United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union), tensions of the Cold War escalated until the Soviet forces implemented the Berlin Blockade of the city's western sectors, which the Western allies relieved with the dramatic airlift. Germany's capital, Berlin, was deep within the area controlled by the Soviet Union after World War II. This is an urban legend which emerged several decades after the speech, and it is not true that residents of Berlin in 1963 would have mainly understood the word "Berliner" to refer to a jelly doughnut or that the audience laughed at Kennedy's use of this expression. There is a widespread misconception that Kennedy accidentally said he was a Berliner, a German doughnut specialty. He highlighted the authorship of Kennedy himself and his 1962 speech in New Orleans as a precedent, and demonstrated that by straying from the prepared script in Berlin, Kennedy created the climax of an emotionally charged political performance, which became a hallmark of the Cold War epoch.
In 2008, historian Andreas Daum provided a comprehensive explanation, based on archival sources and interviews with contemporaries and witnesses. įor decades, competing claims about the origins of the "Ich bin ein Berliner" overshadowed the history of the speech. He also used the classical Latin pronunciation of civis romanus sum, with the c pronounced and the v as. Kennedy used the phrase twice in his speech, including at the end, pronouncing the sentence with his Boston accent and reading from his note "ish bin ein Bear leener", which he had written out using English orthography to approximate the German pronunciation.
#THE ROAD NOT TAKEN FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE FREE#
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!" Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner!". Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was civis romanus sum. Speaking to an audience of 120,000 on the steps of Rathaus Schöneberg, Kennedy said, It was a great morale boost for West Berliners, who lived in an enclave deep inside East Germany and feared a possible East German occupation. The speech is considered one of Kennedy's finest, delivered at the height of the Cold War and the New Frontier. Another phrase in the speech was also spoken in German, "Lasst sie nach Berlin kommen" ("Let them come to Berlin"), addressed at those who claimed "we can work with the Communists", a remark at which Nikita Khrushchev scoffed only days later. The speech was aimed as much at the Soviet Union as it was at West Berliners. Twenty-two months earlier, East Germany had erected the Berlin Wall to prevent mass emigration to West Berlin.
It is one of the best-known speeches of the Cold War and among the most famous anti-communist speeches. Kennedy given on June 26, 1963, in West Berlin. " Ich bin ein Berliner" ( German pronunciation: " I am a Berliner") is a speech by United States President John F.
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