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Community Corner

King's Call for Peace Touches the World

German visitor recounts own push for non-violent resistance

Michael M. Schultz of Hamburg, Germany visited the King Center for Non-Violence Social Change Monday for the commemoration ceremony of the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Schultz presented a plaque to  Rev. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King served as co-pastor, to honor King's quest for non-violence and how he touched the world.

The plaque memorializes King’s visit to Berlin in response to a gentleman, Michael Meyer, who had been shot at 300 times for attempting to cross the Berlin Wall from East Germany into West Germany.

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Though three bullets hit him, he survived, Schultz said.

According to Shultz, in September 1964, at the invitation of Willy Brandt — then West Berlin’s mayor, and later West German chancellor — 35-year-old King traveled to West Berlin to speak at a ceremony commemorating John F. Kennedy's assassination. Kennedy visited West Germany the year before.

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Early in the morning of Sept. 13, 1964, the day after Dr. King’s arrival at Tempelhof Airport, East German border guards had shot and wounded the then-21-year-old Meyer as he was trying to escape from East Berlin. He swam across the Spree River along the Berlin Wall but found he was still in East Berlin. After being struck by several bullets, Meyer was rescued by an American soldier who managed somehow to pull him over the Wall to safety.

When King learned of the incident, he hurried to the Kreuzberg district to witness the scene of the rescue himself. The Wall was then only three years old.
After a ceremony at the Schöneberg city hall where JFK had given his “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech, King spoke to an audience of more than 20,000 in the Waldbühne amphitheater near the Olympic Stadium. The occasion was “Tag der Kirche” (Day of the Church).

Schultz said he remembers vividly the Berlin Wall and the division it caused his country.

He was arrested three times for protesting against Communist rule. Schultz, who lived in East Germany, said he and his sister would cross the Wall to attend a Baptist Church in West Germany.

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