A detour to East Berlin was not planned at all, and then the passport was missing: On September 13, 1964, exactly 60 years ago, Martin Luther King unexpectedly made his way to the eastern part of the divided city during a visit to West Berlin. According to contemporary witnesses, the GDR border guards at Checkpoint Charlie were astonished, but actually let the American civil rights activist and pastor pass without a passport using a “check ID” – this is what Stasi files say. A short time later, King gave a speech in front of hundreds of people in St. Mary’s Church on Alexanderplatz that went down in history.
The Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia is commemorating this with a series of events over the next few days. This Friday there will be a celebration in St. Mary’s Church with the Belarusian human rights activist Olga Karatch and later a concert with Jocelyn B. Smith in St. Sophia’s Church, where King also spoke in 1964. On Sunday theologian and former GDR Foreign Minister Markus Meckel will preach in the House of One. There will also be various other events.
King’s speech in East Berlin three years after the building of the Wall in August 1961 was quite something. The American called the city a “symbol of the divisions of people on earth.” And he continued: “Here, no matter which side of the Wall, are God’s children, and no man-made barrier can erase that fact.” There is a common fate that unites us and that cannot be escaped.
King even spoke of reconciliation, “wherever people ‘tear down the dividing walls of hostility’.” This is how the GDR state security recorded it. After the speech, contemporary witnesses reported, a choir sang “Go down Moses” with the final line “Let my people go”: Let my people go free.
© dpa-infocom, dpa:240913-930-231166/1
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