I was watching a cold war documentary on the German channel zdfInfo, and the building of the Wall came up with its aftermath. Then a segment from a Kennedy speech in Berlin 1963 in black and white was shown, and I thought “Well, this is a different recording of the famous speech in black and white and from a different angle”, but then the famous words came (I’m working from memory, maybe not exactly verbatim) “Therefore today the proudest boast to say is: ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’”
That’s not how I’ve remembered it, but as: “Therefore I take pride in the words: ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’”. I think this is the canonized version.
Now it’s perfectly possible that he held a slightly different speech at his visit somewhere else in Berlin keeping his punchline, but I’m baffled that I’ve never heard about it. Or was I just drunk during the documentary?
[QUOTE=wikipedia]
Kennedy used the phrase twice in his speech, including at the end, pronouncing the sentence with his Boston accent and reading from his note “ish bin ein Bearleener”, which he had written out using English orthography to approximate the German pronunciation.
[/QUOTE]
Aaah, thank you. I’m always embarrassed when I ask a question here that could’ve been answered with a quick walk to wikpedia, but then I sometimes underestimate the font of information that it CAN provide. But I’m still convinced that there are a lot of questions that can be better or even only answered sufficiently here in GQ. I thought this was one of those obscure questions, sorry :).
Anyway, I think that Jack must’ve been so proud of his quick and convincing adaption of the phrase that he had to deliver it twice :). Was kind of a show man.
That’s not how I’ve remembered it, but as: “Therefore I take pride in the words: ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’”. I think this is the canonized version.
