Which US presidents visited the Berlin Wall?

Two US presidents made landmark visits to the Berlin Wall during the Cold War: John F. Kennedy in 1963 and Ronald Reagan in 1987. Both delivered speeches that became defining moments of the era.

John F. Kennedy – 26 June 1963

Kennedy visited West Berlin two years after the Wall went up, at a time when West Berliners felt abandoned by the muted Western response to its construction. Speaking to a crowd of hundreds of thousands outside Schöneberg town hall, he delivered his famous “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech – a powerful declaration of solidarity with the people of West Berlin. (Despite the popular myth, the phrase was grammatically correct and was understood exactly as intended – no German listener thought he was calling himself a jelly doughnut.)

During his visit, Kennedy also viewed the Wall from a platform at Checkpoint Charlie:

Ronald Reagan – 12 June 1987

Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate and directly challenged Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” The speech was controversial at the time – Reagan’s own State Department tried to have the line removed – but it became one of the most quoted phrases of the Cold War. The Wall fell just over two years later.

Reagan had also visited West Berlin earlier, in 1982, when he was photographed at Checkpoint Charlie:

After the Wall

Barack Obama visited Berlin in June 2013 and spoke at the Brandenburg Gate, echoing Kennedy’s and Reagan’s visits. He addressed a crowd on the eastern side of the gate – a location that would have been inside the death strip during the Cold War.