Tear down this wall!

"Tear down this wall"

Complete speech by Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate, Friday, June 12, 1987. "Tear down this wall" passage begins at 11:10 into this video.
Date	June 12, 1987 (1987-06-12)
Venue	Near the Brandenburg Gate at the presently named Platz des 18. März
Location	West Berlin
Also known as	Berlin Wall Speech
Participants	Ronald Reagan
The full text of the speech at Wikisource

This article is part of a series about Ronald Reagan
Personal life Filmography Bibliography Death Residences Birthplace of Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home Rancho del Cielo 668 St. Cloud Road Speeches A Time for Choosing States' rights Evil Empire Tear down this wall! 33rd Governor of California Elections 1966 1970 Governorship 1969 People's Park protest 40th President of the United States Presidency timeline Transition Inaugurations Polls Scandals Tenure Assassination attempt Invasion of Grenada Bombing of Libya Iran–Contra affair AIDS Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty Policies Domestic Reaganomics Foreign Reagan Doctrine international trips Judicial appointments Supreme Court candidates O'Connor Rehnquist Scalia Bork Ginsburg Kennedy Presidential campaigns 1968 primaries convention 1976 primaries convention 1980 election primaries convention debates 1984 election primaries convention debates Legacy Library Accolades Eponyms Depictions music
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The Berlin Wall Speech was delivered by United States President Ronald Reagan in West Berlin on June 12, 1987. The speech is commonly known by a key line from the middle part: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which had encircled West Berlin since 1961.^[1][2][3]

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". Its impact on the Kremlin became widely known after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.^[4] 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 "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech of 1963.^[5] It was written by Peter Robinson—then a speechwriter for the President—who currently hosts the Uncommon Knowledge program of the Hoover Institution.