28 MARCH 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy gives the 1963 public speech in West Berlin where he famously said, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Inset: John F. Kennedy’s phonetic transcription of the German and Latin phrases in the “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, West Berlin, 1963. for time was of the essence. It was mainly a logistics problem; and that is what the Ministry of Health undertook. From the mission we sent cables to the U.S., U.K., and Kenya to try and obtain chloroquine tablets in sufficient amounts and in the shortest possible time to deal with this enormous epidemic. 1963 Giving President Kennedy His “Ich bin ein Berliner” Line Growing up as the son of the Associated Press Bureau Chief in West Berlin, U.S. Information Agency Officer Robert Lochner possessed language skills that were invaluable when President John F. 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. A few weeks before [Kennedy’s] visit I was called to Washington and [National Security Adviser] McGeorge Bundy asked me to prepare a few simple phrases in German and to try to rehearse those with the president. So on a typewriter with large letters I prepared a few very simple sentences. McGeorge Bundy took me into the Oval Office, there was nobody else there, and presented me. 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.” He had been to Berlin and tried some sentences in German and had butchered them in such a fashion that one couldn’t possibly guess what he was trying to say. So fortunately the president took it lightly. He laughed and turned to McGeorge Bundy and said, “Let’s leave the foreign languages to the distaff side.” Of course, everybody knows that Mrs. Kennedy spoke fluent French. So he had not intended to make a single statement in German. … I interpreted for him the whole three days that he was in Germany starting at the airport in Bonn. The receptions in Bonn, Cologne, and Frankfurt were as enthusiastic as you could wish, but the one in Berlin overshadowed everything that we had experienced in Western Germany. … When we stopped for his major speech and walked up the stairs to the City Hall, he called me over and said: “I want you to write out for me on a slip of paper ‘I am a Berliner’ in German.” We first went to [West Berlin Mayor] Willy Brandt’s office while KEYSTONE PRESS/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO WIKIMEDIA COMMONS When we stopped for his major speech and walked up the stairs to the City Hall, he called me over and said: “I want you to write out for me on a slip of paper ‘I am a Berliner’ in German.” —Robert Lochner
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