Its that myth again


Kennedy	Berliner

On 26 June 1963 US President John Kennedy made a speech in Berlin. This was less than two years after the Berlin Wall had been built and his speech was a powerful defence of freedom. In it he said the words Ich bin ein Berliner (I am a Berliner).

His intention was to identify with the people of Berlin, along the lines of Civis romanus sum or I am Spartacus, and this declaration was received by the people of that city with great enthusiasm. But later he was mocked for having identified himself as a jam doughnut. What happened?

In German the unchangeable (non-declining) suffix -er is attached to any place name to make the adjective of that place: frankfurter, wiener (from Vienna) and hamburger are examples that have made their way into English in connection with food. And it happens that a Berliner is a doughnut with jam inside.

I am a teacher and I am an Englishman. English is unusual in placing the indefinite article in such sentences; other European languages see an identity rather than membership of a class and do not use it. In German Ich bin Lehrer and Ich bin Engländer say that I am a teacher and an Englishman. As a result the idea took root that Kennedy, by saying Ich bin ein Berliner with the article ein, had identified himself not as a citizen of Berlin but as a pastry; that he should have said Ich bin Berliner.

But the point is that he was identifying himself with the people of Berlin, not as one of them. Ich bin Lehrer and Ich bin Engländer express an identity between the concepts of myself on one hand and teacher or Englishman on the other, but what Kennedy intended to express was solidarity and in fact his words were perfectly correct.

Such myths never die, however, and the idea that the US President said he was a jammy doughnut has persisted. It was mentioned in Len Deighton’s Berlin Game (1983):

‘Ich bin ein Berliner,’ I said. It was a joke. A Berliner is a doughnut. The day after President Kennedy made his famous proclamation, Berlin cartoonists had a field day with talking doughnuts.

It may possibly have been around for some time before that but I can find no evidence to that effect; it is true too that the fictional narrator of that book, Bernard Samson, is not reliable as a story-teller and the myth may have originated right there. Nevertheless, Deighton himself is quoted as saying:

the day after President Kennedy proclaimed ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ Germany’s many newspaper cartoons depicted talking doughnuts!

Even if that is true however, and I have found no such cartoons, it does not prove that Kennedy was wrong; it merely shows that cartoonists were pointing to an amusing ambiguity of language.

What prompts me to write this now? In yesterday’s Independent the letters editor Guy Keleny repeats this myth in an article in its errors and omissions section referring to an article that it had headlined ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ (my emphasis):

“I am a Berliner,” [Kennedy] declared. Except that he didn’t. Giles Cooper writes in from north London to confirm what an old friend with a degree in German told me long ago. Kennedy, or his speech writer, got it wrong. “Ich bin ein Berliner” means “I am a doughnut” (that is, a particular kind of German doughnut known as a Berliner). The German for “I am a Berliner” (meaning a person from Berlin) has no indefinite article. Kennedy should have said, “Ich bin Berliner.”

In Spain we make jokes about how services are provided by friends of friends, along the lines of: ‘Why pay a translator? This was done by my neighbour’s cousin’s brother-in-law’s 15-year-old son who got a good mark in English last term’. When I see this sort of attribution made seriously in a supposedly reliable British newspaper, however, I despair.

It is always possible for someone else with a better knowledge of German to know otherwise, or for anyone at all to check the facts on the internet. Sadly, that is not the worst we get from the Independent. In a nod to truth and research the article concludes:

It is only fair to add that Wikipedia, in its most solemn American fact-checking mode, dismisses what it calls the “jelly doughnut misconception”, maintaining that what Kennedy said was correct all along. But why spoil a good story?

Yes indeed. If you’re a British journalist, why should you allow ‘solemn fact-checking’ to spoil a good story?

Notes:

Following British usage I write about a jam doughnut. This foodstuff is called jelly in American English, and what is jelly in British is jello in American, where a doughnut is a donut. Such is life and language

Link to Wikipedia and the jelly doughnut misconception.

The Kennedy myth is also comprehensively taken to pieces here, though without mentioning Len Deighton.

An academic view (Wikipedia note)