Ich Bin Ein Berliner Quotes

Ich Bin Ein Berliner

Ich bin ein Berliner,’ I said. It was a joke. A Berliner is a doughnut. The day after President Kennedy made his famous proclamation, Berlin cartoonists had a field day with talking doughnuts.

Einmal hatte ich ein Jobangebot. Es wäre ein super Job gewesen. Aber ich ziehe aus Berlin nicht weg. Ich bin nicht flexibel. Lieber bin ich der Depp von Berlin als der König der Könige in Mährisch-Ostrau. Ich liebe diese Stadt, der Himmel sei mein Zeuge. Ich liebe ihre Versifftheit. Ich knie nieder vor dem schlichten Humor ihrer übergriffigen Bewohner, ich neige mein Haupt vor ihren Bausünden, ich küsse die Füße ihre korrupten Elite, ich werfe mich in den Staub vor ihren Drogen- und Etatproblemen und flechte Kränze für die Habgier ihrer Finanzämter.

Now, swept along by the crowd before him and glancing at his index card where he had scribbled the correct phonetic pronunciation he desired, the president uttered his famous words: 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.

Finally, there was Nicki Pitts, a Berliner by birth, as in “Ich komme aus Berlin,” and not to be confused with the infamous, “Ich bin ein Berliner,” meaning “I am a jelly donut.

All free men, wherever they live, are citizens of Berlin,” said the president. “And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.

I followed Kennedy’s speech with its notorious sentence ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (‘I am a doughnut’ – the correct term is ‘Ich bin Berliner’)

Ich bin ein Berliner’,

Kennedy left behind an adoring city that still remembers him with gruff affection. He created at least one extra, lasting legend. The story of the ‘jelly donut’. For many years, a story has been entertaining the world, to the effect that when the President uttered those hastily included words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ outside the Schöneberg Town Hall, he was committing a laughable grammatical faux pas. By inserting the indefinite article (‘ein’), he was calling himself not a citizen of Berlin, but a jelly donut (known throughout Germany – but not in the capital itself – as a ‘Berliner’). This led, it is said, to great hilarity among the listening crowd. Wonderful as this story is, it does not seem to be accurate. After all, when he was composing the phrase he had with him Rober Lochner and Theodore Sorensen, both of whom – especially Lochner – were fluent in German. The construction he used was an unusual one. Normally, a German simply describing where he comes from would say ‘Ich bin Berliner’ (or Dresdner or Münchner). But Kennedy was not actually from Berlin, as everyone knew full well. He was rather making a rhetorical flourish, including himself in the abstract club of being a Berliner in spirit. The insertion of ‘ein’ made this clear. One German author explains it so: an actor introducing himself at a party would simply announce, ‘Ich bin Schauspieler’; but if he was making a big issue of being an actor, claiming that his calling was relevant to some important matter, he might say: ‘Ich bin ein Schauspieler.’ The alleged amusement among the crowd seems to have been added afterwards as the story got around. The general view at the time held that the audience felt profoundly moved.