A friend of mine spent some time in West Germany in the 1970’s for the US Army. He says the locals claim that when Kennedy said “I am a Berliner” (in German), this actually translated into calling them “jelly rolls”!
The locals explained that a “Berliner” is the term they use for a jelly roll. However, my friend did not know what word the locals used to call themselves.
Could someone of German heritage confirm this? Did the media ever catch this one like the boo-boos of Reagan, Bush, and Qualye?
Just curious to know the striaght dope!
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy - Hawkeye 4077th
I live in Germany, and my husband and his family are Germans. I asked them this question when I first came over, and the consensus is that people knew what Kennedy meant.
It is common for foods that are associated with a particular city to take that city’s name with -er as a suffix, indicating one which originated in that place. A Frankfurter is a long, mild sausage typical of Frankfurt. A Berliner is a jelly doughnut typical of Berlin (and usually available in the Carnival season).
Residents of Berlin refer to themselves as Berliners, so Kennedy didn’t make a gaffe so much as a double entendre.
Side note: I lived in Hamburg when I first moved here, and every other store was labelled ‘Hamburger Metzgerei’ or ‘Hamburger Reisebüro’ or the like. It took me an age before I stopped automatically thinking they were all fast-food restaurants.
I am German. Kennedy’s phrase was perfectly alright, and even the article “ein” is okay. Contrary to what Sue wrote, “ein Berliner” can refer both to a Berlin resident and to a doughnut. “Ich bin Berliner” can only refer to a person and would have resolved any ambiguity for a stand-alone sentence. But there was really no misunderstanding in the first place, given the context. I can’t imagine anyone in the audience snickering.
I’ve been ransacking our place looking for a German dictionary, and somehow we’ve gotten along without a large enough one that I could answer your question, Jinx.
Without being able to cite an authority for the definition, I can only say that in the bakeries here, the label above or below a tray of Berliners is ‘Berliners’. And we are way southwest of Berlin, so I don’t believe that it’s only a regional term.
Sounds like the change in meaning by adding “ein” then, is a UL ubiquitous to most of the crash courses in German provided to the US military members newly arrived to Germany.
Everyone I know has heard that story, regardless of where they were stationed in Germany (5 years in Wuerzburg myself)
Thanks.
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
I had a Berliner once, and it didn’t have any jelly in it. It was hot, like a donut without a hole, with a little cinnamon and powdered sugar sprinkled on top.
Maybe my friend was having his leg pulled? Or maybe some Germans didn’t care for JFK, and chose to propogate the legend of the alternate translation.
Well I’ll be just a red hot sausage!
By the way, I believe the “Nova” car story is correct in Mexico where the car did not sell very well. (Too bad the Vega didn’t have the same label - more appropriately! It’s be truth in advertising for once!)
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy - Hawkeye 4077th
Oh, I was cheekily referring to another tidbit I picked up at the snopes site: http://www.snopes.com/errata/nova.htm
I love that site. It has crushed several cherished beliefs I once held, but it has also washed up a lot of stuff I always felt didn’t make sense but couldn’t disprove. The Nova story is one of those … given that lots of English speakers have figured out that “nova” is just a Latin word for “new”, why couldn’t the Spanish-speakers? I mean, sure no va means something different… The example snopes uses is that no English speaker would think the “Notable” furniture set would lack a table.
Anyway, they also debunk the idea that baby food sells poorly in Africa if it’s got a picture of a baby it, since people allegedly think it must be made of babies. And there’s no real evidence that Walt Disney was frozen at his death…
So if a Berlin child were in a school play and wore a costume of a jelly donut, she/he could speak of her/his role (heh) with the same phrase, “Ich bin ein Berliner”, correct?
Not just when we’re in Berlin (which is pretty much shut as far as large numbers of US troops being posted there. Any US service member assigned anywhere in Germany takes a half-day crash course in German, and German survival skills/cultural differences. That is where I first heard the story, and other service members I know also heard this story in the same setting.
I wonder if they (the teachers)were deliberately pulling our legs…
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
One last thing, wasn’t the gist of Kennedy’s speech that the proudest thing a person could say was “I am a berliner”? As opposed to calling himself a berliner?
The term: The berliner goes by many names in different regions of Germany, with ‘Berliner’ probably understood everywhere. In Berlin itself (I believe) and some other regions they are called ‘Pfannkuchen’ (literally, ‘pancake’), which is ambiguous elsewhere. A long form is ‘Berliner Pfannkuchen’ (‘Berlin pancake’), which is unambiguous but rarely used. ‘Berliner’ is probably shortened from that. Where I grew up, we say ‘Krapfen’ (which my dictionary translates as ‘cruller’). I’m sure there are more words.
Language courses: I don’t think the article thing must be a joke; it might just be to avoid ambiguities, or it’s simply a popular misconception that dies hard. Maybe it stems from the English analogue for country names (such as the phrase “I am a Danish” cited on the snopes page). In any case, I learned a lot of similar crap about English in school for 9 years.
The object: Boris B, what you had was not a berliner, at least not a traditional one (there are variants, of course). A normal berliner has some jelly or jam in it, strawberry being the favorite. (Plum is frequent in some parts.) It has sugar on top (powder or icing), has no hole, and is served at room temperature (or maybe lukewarm if fresh from the pan). Cinnamon is not usually an ingredient – perhaps in the Christmas season.
The tradition: Berliners are eaten throughout the year, but they are favorites for the party seasons, especially carnival and New Year’s Eve. For the latter (don’t know about the former) it is tradition to have one berliner in the pack that is filled with mustard. Of course, you are expected to eat heartily anyway…
And that’s probably all you ever wanted to know about berliners!
Is that Scharfersenf, Mittelsharfersenf, or Suessersenf?
For those who have not been to Germany, mustard there bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Frank’s yellow stuff called mustard here. OTOH, neither is it like Chinese mustard…
Sue from El Paso
Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.
Sue, I’m not sure because I haven’t been the “lucky” one at a New Year’s party in a long time. But my guess would be mittelscharf. Süßer Senf only goes with Weißwurst, AFAIK, and extra scharf would probably be considered too mean (considering they’re usually not self-made but bought at the baker’s).
Not that this is really relevant to the topic at hand, but in Switzerland you can buy round pastries (with no hole) filled with jelly, and we call them
“boules de Berlin”, aka “Berlin balls”.
Quand les talons claquent, l’esprit se vide.
Maréchal Lyautey