Tear down this wall!
Sign in to saveAlso known as Ronald Reagan's Berlin Wall Speech, Brandenburg Gate Speech, Berlin Wall Speech, Remarks at Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany
speech delivered by President Ronald Reagan of the USA in West Berlin in June 1987
Key facts
- Date
- June 12, 1987 ( 1987-06-12 )
- Venue
- Near the Brandenburg Gate at the presently named Platz des 18. März
- Location
- West Berlin
- Participants
- Ronald Reagan
via Wikipedia infobox
~12 min read
Encyclopedic overview
On June 12, 1987, at the Brandenburg Gate, then-United States president Ronald Reagan delivered a speech commonly known by a key line from the middle part: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Reagan called for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to open the Berlin Wall, which had encircled West Berlin since 1961.
The following day, The New York Times carried Reagan’s picture on the front page, below the title "Reagan Calls on Gorbachev to Tear Down the Berlin Wall". In the post-Cold War era, it was often seen as one of the most memorable performances of an American president in Berlin after John F. Kennedy's 1963 speech "Ich bin ein Berliner". Reagan's speech was written by Peter Robinson.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Tear down this wall!” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.