The American president went by motorcade to the Reichstag, which had housed the German parliament until the Nazi era. During the Cold War, it was used only for ceremonial functions, while the West German parliament met in Bonn. Reagan viewed an exhibition there commemorating the Marshall Plan, and then stepped out onto a balcony so that he could look down from above at the Berlin Wall, a few hundred feet away. East Germany’s Ministry of State Security, the infamous Stasi, operated a building on the eastern side of the wall, in a location that would enable it to hear as many conversations as possible in West Berlin. Ever attentive, the U.S. Secret Service had erected a large bulletproof glass shield around the balcony to protect Reagan from this Stasi outpost for the few minutes he would be on the balcony. John Kornblum, the U.S. minister in West Berlin, thought at the time that this particular precaution was a little silly, since it was unlikely the Stasi would try to take a shot at Reagan from inside its own building. As Reagan looked at the wall, a reporter asked him whether he thought it would ever be torn down. He responded with a biblical allusion. “Well, Jericho didn’t last forever,” Reagan replied.3
From there, it was only a three-minute car ride to the special platform that had been erected for Reagan’s speech just on the west side of the Berlin Wall, with the Brandenburg Gate in East Berlin in the background. The crowd that had assembled for Reagan was, it turned out, far smaller than the forty thousand that U.S. officials had wanted and expected. Both Berlin police and internal U.S. government estimates put the figure at twenty thousand, and some thought the crowd was even smaller than that. The participants had been given American flags, which they waved from time to time.4
Aides had prepared for the president a special version of his speech in which all the non-English words were transliterated (for the German Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin, Reagan’s text said, “Ish hob knock I-nen Coffer in Ber-leen.” The German street Ku’damm became “Koo-damn,” and German president von Weizsäcker was rendered as “Fun VITES-ecker.” As usual, Reagan had marked up his version of the text with diagonal slashes so that he would pause at just the right places (“General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace /// if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe /// if you seek liberalization /// come here, to this gate”).5
West German chancellor Helmut Kohl and his wife, Hannelore, who had joined the Reagan party at the Reichstag, sat on the podium with him. First Diepgen and then Kohl welcomed the crowd. In introducing the American president, the German chancellor took note of the Berlin Wall behind him and said it could not be history’s answer to the German problem. Finally, Reagan, dressed in white shirt with a red tie, delivered effortlessly the speech over which his administration had been battling for weeks.
Thank you very much. Chancellor Kohl, Governing Mayor Diepgen, ladies and gentlemen: Twenty-four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, speaking to the people of this city and the world at the city hall. Well, since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn, to Berlin. And today I, myself, make my second visit to your city.
We come to Berlin, we American Presidents, because it’s our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom. But I must confess, we’re drawn here by other things as welclass="underline" by the feeling of history in this city, more than 500 years older than our own nation; by the beauty of the Grunewald and the Tiergarten; most of all, by your courage and determination. Perhaps the composer Paul Lincke understood something about American Presidents. You see, like so many Presidents before me, I come here today because wherever I go, whatever I do: “Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin.” [I still have a suitcase in Berlin.]
Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. I understand that it is being seen and heard as well in the East. To those listening throughout Eastern Europe, I extend my warmest greetings and the goodwill of the American people. To those listening in East Berlin, a special word: Although I cannot be with you, I address my remarks to you just as surely as to those standing here before me. For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.]
Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe. From the Baltic, south, those barriers cut across Germany in a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guardtowers. Farther south, there may be no visible, no obvious wall. But there remain armed guards and checkpoints all the same—still a restriction on the right to travel, still an instrument to impose upon ordinary men and women the will of a totalitarian state. Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate, every man is a German, separated from his fellow men. Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar.
President von Weizsäcker has said: “The German question is open as long as the Brandenburg Gate is closed.” Today I say: As long as this gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the German question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind. Yet I do not come here to lament. For I find in Berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph.
In this season of spring in 1945, the people of Berlin emerged from their air raid shelters to find devastation. Thousands of miles away, the people of the United States reached out to help. And in 1947 Secretary of State—as you’ve been told—George Marshall announced the creation of what would become known as the Marshall plan. Speaking precisely 40 years ago this month, he said: “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”
In the Reichstag a few moments ago, I saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the Marshall plan. I was struck by the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. I understand that Berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the Western sectors of the city. The sign read simply: “The Marshall plan is helping here to strengthen the free world.” A strong, free world in the West, that dream became real. Japan rose from ruin to become an economic giant. Italy, France, Belgium—virtually every nation in Western Europe saw political and economic rebirth; the European Community was founded.
In West Germany and here in Berlin, there took place an economic miracle, the Wirtschaftswunder. Adenauer, Erhard, Reuter, and other leaders understood the practical importance of liberty—that just as truth can flourish only when the journalist is given freedom of speech, so prosperity can come about only when the farmer and businessman enjoy economic freedom. The German leaders reduced tariffs, expanded free trade, lowered taxes. From 1950 to 1960 alone, the standard of living in West Germany and Berlin doubled.
Where four decades ago there was rubble, today in West Berlin there is the greatest industrial output of any city in Germany—busy office blocks, fine homes and apartments, proud avenues, and the spreading lawns of park land. Where a city’s culture seemed to have been destroyed, today there are two great universities, orchestras and an opera, countless theaters, and museums. Where there was want, today there’s abundance—food, clothing, automobiles—the wonderful goods of the Ku’damm. From devastation, from utter ruin, you Berliners have, in freedom, rebuilt a city that once again ranks as one of the greatest on Earth. The Soviets may have had other plans. But, my friends, there were a few things the Soviets didn’t count on: Berliner herz, Berliner humor, ja, und Berliner schnauze. [Berliner heart, Berliner humor, yes, and a Berliner schnauze.]