No Prussian votes in Electoral College

When I was in junior high school, my bedroom wall was decorated with political memorabilia - campaign posters, bumper stickers and “parchment” copies of political speeches. Among the speeches were some gems from John F. Kennedy.

President Kennedy had wonderful speechwriters, and his addresses are filled with memorable quotes. But my all-time favorite Kennedy line is the ambiguous conclusion of a speech he gave in West Berlin in June of 1963.

Kennedy, trying to express his solidarity with the people of Berlin, concluded with the words, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Now this can mean one of two things, either “I am of Berlin” or “I am a jelly doughnut.”

I love the latter translation - and I'm not alone. For several years, one of the writers for Chess Life and Review called his column “Ich bin ein Berliner,” and anyone who has played much chess knows exactly why. You think and think and think, make your move, realize two seconds later it was a mistake - “I am a jelly doughnut.”

It seems that, in the current presidential campaign, the No. 1 priority of both candidates is to avoid as far as possible the jelly doughnut moment, to steer clear of any political gaffe that their opponents might turn to advantage.

Unfortunately, in trying so hard to avoid mistakes, the candidates often end up saying nothing at all - and yet the mistakes are there anyway.

Consider Barack Obama's speech in Berlin last month. It was beautifully choreographed: 200,000 cheering Germans - many waving American flags - make a splendid backdrop. True-believer Democrats must have loved the symbolism. The cheering crowds reflected their hope that the sophisticated Europeans (who laugh at us for having Bush as president) will like and respect us again if we elect Obama.

But what did Obama actually say? Obama's speechwriters obviously had looked at the famous Kennedy and Reagan Berlin speeches and figured that a Berlin speech ought to say something about international cooperation and tearing down walls, and they gave us plenty of glittering generalities along those lines. But they didn't give us much in the way of memorable quotes. They didn't give us much in terms of specific prescription for the future. And, surprisingly, they didn't even give us an attempt at German. Despite Obama's own earlier comments denigrating Americans who, when they visited Europe, couldn't say anything more than “merci beaucoup,” Obama's writers didn't even give us a "danke schon."

But they did give us plenty of gaffes. They told us, for instance, that the wall between Catholics and Protestants in Belfast was coming down. This is just not so: the physical barriers between Catholic and Protestant areas in Belfast are greater than ever.

And then there's this very strange line Obama's speechwriters gave him toward the beginning of his speech, “I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken in this great city.”

Now what exactly did they mean by that? That Obama was the first black American political leader to speak in Berlin? Not so. When I read this line, my first reaction was, “Hey, what about Ralph Bunche?” I treated my wife to a long diatribe about the appalling ignorance of speechwriters who don't seem to know anything about the distinguished career of this once-famous, Noble-Peace-Prize-winning black American diplomat. But I had myself missed something. No need to go back to Ralph Bunche: Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell also have spoken to large Berlin audiences. Well, Ich bin ein Berliner.

And Obama's handlers are Berliners too. Despite fawning media coverage, Obama's European tour seems to have hurt him, and, in retrospect, it's easy to see why. Obama again and again cast himself, not as an American presidential candidate, but as a world citizen. And, with a choice between a “citizen of the world” and an American patriot most Americans will choose - well, it depends on whether or not we are jelly doughnuts.

Evewn though I speak very little German, I have always had a problem with Kennedy’s so-called gaffe. While “Berliner” is a type of doughnut, it also means “citizen of Berlin.” I severly doubt that those who heard his speech assumed he was talking about doughnuts.

As I read somewhere once, would a crowd at Madison Square Garden mistake Obama saying, “I am a New Yorker,” as meaning Obama is a pretensious magazine?

When I was stationed in West Germany in 1975 my German friends told a joke about digging up JFK for another autopsy and discovering that he was filled with jelly. A German would say, “I am from Berlin”. Ich bin ein berliner” really means “I am a jelly donut”. However, the Germans loved Kennedy’s solidarity and intention to stand up to the commies despite their mirth at the minor language gaffe. Compare Kennedy’s courage and leadership to the craven Left that now says that tiny Georgia “provoked” Russia when the Russkies had planned the invasion for months and used the South Ossetian militia to start the fighting. JFK would be a Republican today.

Wikipedia says that if you are just stating that you’re from Berlin as a matter of fact, “Ich bin Berliner” is right. If you want to speak figuratively, to say that you’re spiritually a Berliner, you can — even have to — put an “ein” before Berliner. People got what he was saying. Supposedly, too, the jelly donut is called a Berliner in other parts of the country, but not in the city itself.

I don’t speak German, but my understanding is that to say that one is “of Berlin” one should say “Ich bin Berliner” without the “ein.” It’s as if one wanted to say, in English, that one is from Denmark: Surely one would say “I am Danish,” not “I am a Danish,” if one wanted to avoid being confused for a pastry.

Like I said before, I do not speak German, but I believe you are correct. Pertaning to the grammatical split between actual and “spiritual” citizens, I doubt that the German language is so strict as to guarantee that inserting one little article (”ein”) will have very much effect on the meaning. Kennedy’s statement was a metaphor, of course. He was not literally a citizen of Berlin, but he did have fraternal feelings for it.

Yes, but if in English you wanted to say you were a citizen of London, you would say “I am a Londoner.” If you wanted to say you were a British or German citizen, you could say “I am an Englishman,” or, “I am a German,” but you probably wouldn’t, prefering “I am German,” instead.

I am not aware of a specific rule differentiating between cities and nations in this way, but I do know that words like “Londoner” and “New Yorker” are perfectly acceptable with an article.

Kennedy, trying to express his solidarity with the people of Berlin, concluded with the words, “Ich bin ein Berliner.”

Some wit said that Obama went to Germany and said, "Ich bin ein Beginner". I think that gem should be used more often.

It’s not a city/country thing, it’s a noun/adjective thing. No article is used prior to an adjective, but an article is used prior to a noun. “English” is an adjective, so you say “I am English” (with no article); “Londoner” and “Englishman” are nouns, so you say “I am a Londoner” and “I am an Englishman” (in each case with the article “a”).

By the same token, when “Danish” is used to represent someone from Denmark, it is an adjective, so you say “I am Danish” (no article), and when the noun “Dane” is used to represent someone from Denmark, you say “I am a Dane” (with the article “a”). Of course, “danish” can also be a noun, but only when it represents a pastry, so if you say “I am a danish” you are saying that you are a type of breakfast pastry.

I don’t speak German, so I don’t know for sure that the adjective “Berliner” refers to someone from Berlin while the noun “Berliner” refers strictly to a type of doughnut, but assuming that German is similar enough to English in that respect then the use of “ein” by Kennedy turned “Berliner” into a noun and thus turned Kennedy into a jelly doughnut.

I admit that my previous post was a bit vapid. Trying to think in another language for a while made me forget to point out the simple fact that “British” is an adjective while “Londoner” is a noun. My problem with your “Danish” example, then, is that “Danish” is an adjective, whereas Berliner (in English) is a noun. I should have said that in the first place.

What I don’t understand is why “Berliner” is not considered a noun in German, like it is be in English. Further, why is the word for “spiritual citizen” a noun while the word for actual citizen is an adjective? My suspicion is that Kennedy could have said either and been understood.

Maybe my whole problem is that, not being a German speaker, I confuse myself with the English meaning of the word “Berliner.”

I know a little Germain and always assumed the jelly dough nut translation was correct, but urbanlegends.about.com says that there are subtleties in the German language that foreigners don’t generally learn.

According to them “ ... if President Kennedy had said ‘Ich bin Berliner,’ he would have sounded silly because with his heavy accent he couldn’t possibly have come from Berlin. But by saying ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,’ he actually said ‘I am one with the people of Berlin.’”

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