yet, it is here in berlin where the wall emerges most clearly; here, cutting across your city, where the news photo and the television screen have imprinted this brutal division of a continent upon the mind of the world.
standing before the brandenburg gate, every man is a german separated from his fellow men.
every man is a berliner, forced to look upon a scar.
president von weizsacker has said, "the german question is open as long as the brandenburg gate is closed." well today -- today i say: as long as the gate is closed, as long as this scar of a wall is permitted to stand, it is not the german question alone that remains open, but the question of freedom for all mankind.
yet, i do not come here to lament. for i find in berlin a message of hope, even in the shadow of this wall, a message of triumph.
in this season of spring in 1945, the peo
ple of berlin emerged from their air-raid shelters to find devastation. thousands of miles away, the people of the united states reached out to help. and in 1947 secretary of state -- as you've been told --george marshall announced the creation of what would become known as the marshall plan. speaking precisely 40 years ago this month, he said: "our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos."
in the reichstag a few moments ago, i saw a display commemorating this 40th anniversary of the marshall plan. i was struck by the sign on a burnt-out, gutted structure that was being rebuilt. i understand that berliners of my own generation can remember seeing signs like it dotted throughout the western sectors of the city. the sign read simply: "the marshall plan is helping here to strengthen the free world." a strong, free world in the west, that dream became real. japan rose from r