Word: berlin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
When Kennedy did see the Wall, the event became one of the great spectacles of the cold war, his speech one of the most memorable in his presidency. When Kennedy flew into Berlin that June morning, he had a text that did not please him. "You think this is any good?" he asked the U.S. Berlin commander, Major General James Polk, who had joined the Kennedy caravan.Polk scanned the speech and replied bluntly, "I think it is terrible." Kennedy agreed and began to write a new one. But before he taunted the builders of the Wall, he rode four hours...
...Checkpoint Charlie he asked that family members and other guests not climb up to the viewing stand. Mouth set, Kennedy studied the strange, gray emptiness before him. Then, in far windows in East Berlin apartments, three women appeared waving handkerchiefs. "Isn't that kind of dangerous?" wondered Kennedy. Yes, he was told. Kennedy stood several seconds in tribute to those tiny figures...
...crowd that waited for him to speak in front of West Berlin's city hall occupied every foot of the square and all the connecting streets. Kennedy raised his jaw and chopped the air with his hand, his voice growing ragged as he shouted his challenges to the other world and answered with his famous $ refrain, "Let them come to Berlin." In that moment the tribute Kennedy gave to those people was as honorably held, as profoundly pure as anything he had ever said. It was made of truth and given to history. "Ich bin ein Berliner...
With breathtaking speed, the hideous partition that split Berlin falls to the pickax of reforms inspired by Mikhail Gorbachev. As the city exults and the world ponders the consequences, one thing is certain: nothing will ever be quite the same again. -- Is one Germany better than two? -- An obituary for the Wall of Shame, where some 75 people yearning for freedom have perished...
...their rural contemporaries, burdened with the feudal status of serf, were denied. Only in the 20th century has a city had a wall rammed through its innards, circumscribing the freedom of two-thirds of its people, forcing upon them a serf-like tie to the land. Only in Berlin...