The Jelly Donut
On June 23rd, 1963, President John F. Kennedy delivered his infamous speech at the Berlin Wall in Germany. But the translators left something out.
The crowds at the Berlin Wall roared when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy attempted to speak to them in German. His goal was to prove that free Germany was not alone in the cold war struggle against the totalitarian regime of the Soviet Union.
It was a different time then. People still personally remembered the horrors of World War II. The threat of another war was very real. The Russians terrified the world for very good reason. So the citizens of West Berlin and the media were thrilled when a young, popular, American president came to Berlin and spoke for freedom. They were even willing to overlook his bad German.
For you see, Ich bin ein Berliner, those now infamous words of JFK, don’t exactly mean what folks in America were led to believe. In English, a citizen of New York is a New Yorker. But in German the word for a citizen of the city of Berlin is not a "Berliner". It is something else all together.
Translated correctly, Ich bin ein Berliner, actually means I am a donut. A more careful translation would even lead to the rendering; I am a jelly donut. It's true. That's what JFK said that June day in 1963: "I am a jelly donut!"
Funny, his mistranslation did not impact the media. You won’t find it in many history books or on the Discovery Channel. His slip up was overlooked. He was young, handsome, and so very sincere, and times were so very, very different then. Can you imagaine today how the media would respond if Dan Quayle tried to get away with that one?