The German history of the 20th century does not give us great joys, so the positive moments of such a difficult past are celebrated with enthusiasm. This June 26 coincides with two happy anniversaries: the 60th anniversary of the visit to West Berlin by US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and the 75th anniversary of the start of the allied airlift against the Soviet blockade of the western sector of the city in 1948-1949.
The coincidence is not accidental. Kennedy chose to be in West Berlin on June 26, 1963 precisely to mark the then fifteenth anniversary of the start of the airlift. That day, in a legendary address to the crowd from the balcony of the Schöneberg City Hall, Kennedy uttered in German the legendary phrase “Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner).
In the midst of the Cold War, and as part of a European tour, Kennedy visited the Federal Republic of Germany (RFA) from June 23 to 26. Citizens gave him a warm welcome. The young American president – ??he was 46 years old – was acclaimed everywhere, but in West Berlin he unleashed delirium. People applauded him from houses and sidewalks, and as the procession passed by – it circulated in an open car alongside the mayor, Willy Brandt, and the chancellor, Konrad Adenauer – it rained confetti and welcome banners, as seen in the filming of the epoch. His stay lasted eight hours.
The significance of the visit and the speech were commemorated in the German capital with a party on Saturday in the square that bears his name in front of the building where he spoke, which served as the West Berlin City Hall during the division of the city. In front of hundreds of people, images of his drive through the streets of Berlin were projected on a large screen. We also saw footage of their passage through the Checkpoint Charlie border checkpoint and the elevated viewpoint at Potsdamer Platz from which Westerners peered over the Wall, which the German Democratic Republic (GDR) had erected just two years earlier, in August. from 1961.
The construction of the barrier had turned West Berlin into a western island, now also physically. If West Berliners – who had already lived through the Soviet blockade, during which the Allies supplied them with food, medicine and coal by air for almost a year – now felt surrounded, for East Berliners who wanted to flee the Wall was a deadly obstacle. Spirits were low, and Kennedy’s 18-minute speech in English – which was seen and heard again the day before yesterday on the big screen in Schöneberg – was a promise 60 years ago.
“A life in freedom is not easy, and democracy is not perfect. But we have never needed to build a wall to keep our people with us and prevent them from going somewhere else,” Kennedy said. And he ended his speech like this: “All free people, wherever they live, are citizens of this city of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I am proud to be able to say: Ich bin ein Berliner.” The square was crowded that day with thousands of people.
“That sentence showed the full determination of Americans to defend the freedom of Berlin,” the current mayor, Kai Wegner, said on Saturday. “My father was also in this square in 1963 and he listened to Kennedy; he left the square with a lot of hope ”.
The visit did not please the communist authorities of the GDR at all, who adorned the Brandenburg Gate – which was in their sector – with red flags. The regime organized a visit by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to East Berlin a few days later, on June 28, which did not arouse anywhere near the same enthusiasm on that side.
On the drive to Schöneberg, an impressed Kennedy told his companions: “I’m sorry these Germans are not American voters.” The elections scheduled for the following year, 1964, did not look rosy for the Democrat Kennedy. The first Catholic president of the United States, and the youngest at the time of his election, could no longer face them. He was murdered in Dallas aboard another car discovered on November 22, 1963, five months after his triumphant visit to Berlin, but that’s another story.
