Thank you very much. Chancellor Kohl, Governing Mayor Diepgen, ladies and gentlemen: Twenty four years ago, President John F. Kennedy visited Berlin, speaking to the people of this city and the world at the city hall. Well, since then two other presidents have come, each in his turn, to Berlin. And today I, myself, make my second visit to your city.

We come to Berlin, we American Presidents, because it's our duty to speak, in this place, of freedom. But I must confess, we're drawn here by other things as well: by the feeling of history in this city, more than 500 years older than our own nation; by the beauty of the Grunewald and the Tiergarten; most of all, by your courage and determination. Perhaps the composer, Paul Lincke, understood something about American Presidents. You see, like so many Presidents before me, I come here today because wherever I go, whatever I do: "Ich hab noch einen koffer in Berlin." [I still have a suitcase in Berlin.]

Our gathering today is being broadcast throughout Western Europe and North America. I understand that it is being seen and heard as well in the East. To those listening throughout Eastern Europe, I extend my warmest greetings and the good will of the American people. To those listening in East Berlin, a special word: Although I cannot be with you, I address my remarks to you just as surely as to those standing here before me. For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin.] (1-12)

In the very first sentence, Reagan brings up JFK's visit to Berlin twenty-four years earlier. Why? Why bring up that visit instead of, say, Nixon's trip to the city in 1969?

Well, because President Nixon didn't call himself a jelly doughnut in front of hundreds of thousands of people.

Neither did JFK, actually. But his Beantown-accented "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("Berliner" is slang for "jelly donut" in some parts of Deutschland, but it's called Pfannkuchen in Berlin) had been super well-received back in the day, and Reagan was about to bring it back and turn it into a thing once more. Mentioning it now was just priming the pump for when Reagan would really make it rain with his "Es gibt nur ein Berlin" later on (12).

In fact, it doesn't take long for Reagan to start talking about the city of Berlin like he grew up there. He gets all poetic about the history, the pretty forests, and the "courage and determination" of the Berlin people (5). Everyone knows this dude hasn't spent any serious time in Berlin; this was only his second presidential visit to the city and his third visit ever. But his audience ate it up like bacon when he quoted one of Berlin's unofficial anthems: "Ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin" (7).

So what's the point of all this? The point is solidarity. Reagan uses the first seven or so lines of this speech to reaffirm the bond between the United States (and the West) and West Germany. Brotherhood. Unity. Or, in this case, re-unity.