The record
A painted element outside the German-American school named for the president who said he was a Berliner — and the last of three sites the catalogue's old generic Berlin row was pointing at.
A wall element with coloured graffiti stands in front of the John F. Kennedy School, the German-American school in the south-west of Berlin. The Berlin Wall Foundation catalogues it in its directory of surviving traces as MAU-765, photographed in 2022 and dated to the Grenzmauer 75 generation.
The siting needs no explanation beyond the name over the door. Kennedy went to West Berlin in June 1963, two years after the border closed, and told the crowd at the Rathaus Schöneberg that he too was a Berliner; the school that carries his name teaches German and American children together, which is the same argument made slowly.
This record closes one of three loose ends. The catalogue's single generic row for Berlin had a lead attached to it describing five separate sites, and three of them could not be sourced when the Berlin batch was written: a segment in the courtyard of the United States embassy, a collection at Stralauer Allee 3, and two segments at this school. The Foundation's directory settles this one.
The two accounts do not quite agree, and both are kept. The lead reported two segments here, cemented back to back with the short foot extensions cut off, so that one side shows colourful graffiti and the other the plain whitewash of the east face. The Foundation records a single element. Those readings are not necessarily in conflict — two slabs joined back to back present as one object from either side — but nothing read here settles it, and the number is left open rather than chosen.
How did it get here?
Not established. The Foundation's directory records the element and its position but not how it came to the school.
Sources & verification
MAU-765 Mauerelement vor der John-F.-Kennedy-Schule — MAUERSPUREN, Stiftung Berliner Mauer ↗
A wall element with coloured graffiti standing in front of the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin, catalogued as MAU-765, classified as a Mauerelement, dated from 1980 and photographed in 2022.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
List of Berlin Wall segments — Wikipedia ↗
The report that two segments were set up at the John F. Kennedy School for the twentieth anniversary in November 2009, cemented back to back with the base extensions cut off, one face graffitied and the other left plain white.
Source accessed 2026-09-17
Last verified: Not yet verified
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