Henry-Ford-Building Freie Universität Berlin

“Ich bin ein Berliner” (“I am a Berliner”), declared John F. Kennedy in front of the city hall in Schöneberg amidst the cheers of hundreds of thousands of West Berliners. The American President’s visit on 26 June 1963 was received as a declaration of unflinching support for the freedom of the western half of the city, an area that had been surrounded by the Wall for two years. That morning, Kennedy had landed at Tegel Airport and toured the city of Berlin, visiting Checkpoint Charlie and the Brandenburg Gate. Following his now famous speech, the President’s next stop was the Free University (Freie Universität) in the district of Dahlem in the afternoon, where at a ceremony outside the Henry Ford Building he was awarded an honorary university fellowship, the highest distinction conferred. Kennedy’s trip to Dahlem and his speech to around 12,000 students were political gestures, for the Free University was regarded as a symbol of the struggle against socialist indoctrination and had been founded largely with American aid. This particular part of the university also existed thanks to American sponsors: the Henry Ford Building, the main building of the Free University, was financed by donations from the Ford Foundation in America and constructed between 1952 and 1954 according to designs by Berlin architects Franz Heinrich Sobotka and Gustav Müller.