• Read transcript (3 minutes)
Kennedy opened by acknowledging his hosts: West Berlin’s mayor Willy Brandt, West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and General Lucius Clay, the American who had directed the 1948-49 Berlin Airlift. He then drew a parallel between ancient Rome and the contemporary free world, declaring that whereas the proudest boast had once been “civis Romanus sum,” it had become “Ich bin ein Berliner.”
The address used Berlin as a rhetorical proving ground for arguments against communism. Four times Kennedy invited skeptics—those who believed communism was the future, that the West could cooperate with it, or that its economic record excused its politics—to “come to Berlin.” He characterized the Wall as a demonstration of the failures of the communist system and as “an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity,” citing its division of families.
Kennedy linked the city’s situation to the broader cause of German reunification and global freedom, asserting that lasting peace in Europe required that Germans be permitted a free choice. He closed by repeating the German phrase, declaring that all free men, wherever they lived, were citizens of Berlin.
“Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source“Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.”
— John F. Kennedy Primary source• Title: Ich bin ein Berliner speech
• Author: John F. Kennedy
• Type: Speech
• Publisher: n/a
• Publication time: June 26, 1963
• Publication place: West Berlin, Germany
Old Age
The Gettysburg Address (November 19, 1863)
Abraham Lincoln
Smithsonian Oral and Video Histories: Steve Jobs (April 20, 1995)
Steve Jobs, Daniel Morrow (interviewer)
Poor Charlie’s Almanack (2005)
Charlie Munger (compiled by Peter D. Kaufman)