He had expressed the hopes of everyone in the crowd, living in an outpost of capitalism, a veritable island in a sea of communism. It was lonely to be a Berliner in those days and Kennedy addressed that sense of alone-ness by making Berlin universal.
"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.'"
There was no containing the crowd now. They cheered and they wept. And the cheering and weeping went on and on. The police were useless because they were cheering and the tears were streaming down their faces as well.
It did not matter that Kennedy's German was mangled, that an interpreter had pencilled the phonetic transliteration "Ish bin ine bear-LEAN-ar" on the margin of the text of his speech.
He had touched something deep inside his listeners and the response took him and everyone else on the podium aback. Not since Adolf Hitler had a Berlin crowd been so ecstatic. That was a sobering thought.
"Mr. President, I think you went too far," Kennedy's aide McGeorge Bundy said as they were whisked across town to Kennedy's next speaking appearance at Berlin's Free University. Chastened, Kennedy toned down the text for that venue.
That evening he flew to Ireland, never to return. Less than five months later he would be felled by an assassin's bullet and Berliners -- on both sides of the Wall -- would place candles in their windows.
And they would never forget his words to them and his confidence that Berlin would one day be re-united.
"When that day finally comes, as it will," he had told them that mid-summer's evening, "the people of West Berlin can take sober satisfaction in the fact that they were in the front lines."
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