Giving President Kennedy the most famous line in his Berlin speech
Sometimes securing relationships with our allies comes down to giving our leaders the language they need to win over hearts and minds. Growing up as the son of the Associated Press Bureau Chief in West Berlin, U.S. Information Agency officer Robert Lochner’s language skills were invaluable in 1963 when President Kennedy came to the divided city, where Lochner was directing “Radio in the American Sector” broadcasts. He served as Kennedy’s interpreter throughout his historic visit to West Germany, coaching the president on his German pronunciation and translating the line that sent a poignant message of solidarity in the depths of the Cold War.
Having worked rather unsuccessfully with Robert Kennedy on his German during a recent Berlin visit, Lochner was called to Washington a few weeks before President Kennedy’s trip for some rehearsals. National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy asked him to prepare a few simple phrases in German and brought him into the Oval Office to try to rehearse those with the president.
“I want you to write out for me on a slip of paper ‘I am a Berliner’ in German.”
President John F. Kennedy to Robert Lochner
Let’s let Lochner tell it: “I gave one copy to the president and slowly read out the first sentence in German and asked him to repeat it. When he did and looked up, he must have seen my rather dismayed face, because he said, ‘Not very good, was it?’ So what do you say to a president under those circumstances? All I could think of was to blurt out, ‘Well, it certainly was better than your brother Bobby!’”
The president took it lightly, telling Bundy that he would leave foreign languages to the First Lady and dropping the idea of saying anything in German during his trip.
Lochner interpreted for President Kennedy throughout his three-day visit to Germany – in Bonn, Cologne, Frankfurt, and finally Berlin, where the local enthusiasm for his visit was unmatched. As they were walking up the stairs to the City Hall, Kennedy called Lochner over and said, “I want you to write out for me on a slip of paper ‘I am a Berliner’ in German.”
While Kennedy spoke with West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt and more than a hundred thousand people cheered outside, Lochner quickly, in pencil, wrote out the phrase in capital letters, then rehearsed it with the president a few times.
The response to the statement “Ich bin ein Berliner” was so overwhelming that Kennedy and Bundy immediately rewrote his second major speech for the day, adding some conciliatory statements for Eastern ears. As Lochner himself put it, “The statement was much stronger for having been made in German and millions of Germans since then have repeated his ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ while they probably would not have quoted ‘I am a Berliner.’”