Today in History, June 26: U.S. President John F. Kennedy Berlin Speech

1963, on June 26, U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, underlining the support of the United States for democratic West Germany, shortly after Soviet-supported East Germany erected the Berlin Wall.

“Ich bin ein Berliner" (German for "I am a Berliner") is a quotation from a June 26, 1963, speech by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in West Berlin. Kennedy aimed to underline the support of the United States for West Germany. 22 months after Soviet-supported East Germany erected the Berlin Wall to prevent mass emigration to the West. The message was aimed as much at the Soviets as it was at Berliners. It was a clear statement of U.S. policy in the wake of the construction of the Berlin Wall.

The speech is considered one of Kennedy's best. Both a notable moment of the Cold War and a high point of the New Frontier. It was a great morale boost for population of West Berlin, who lived in an enclave deep inside East Germany and who feared a possible East German occupation.

Speaking from a platform erected on the steps of city hall “Rathaus Schöneberg”, for an audience of 450,000, Kennedy used the phrase twice. In the first part of his speech: ‘Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was “civis romanus sum” ("I am a Roman citizen"). Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner!". And a second time as the finishing words of his speech: ‘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!"

Kennedy had written out the sentence using English orthography to approximate the German pronunciation and read with his Boston accent from his note "ish bin ein Bearleener".

While the immediate response from the West German population was positive, the Soviet authorities were less pleased with the combative tone of Kennedy. Only two weeks before, Kennedy had spoken in a more conciliatory tone. Speaking of "improving relations with the Soviet Union": in response to Kennedy's Berlin speech, Nikita Khrushchev, the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, days later, remarked that "one would think that the speeches were made by two different Presidents