The Freedom Bell (in German, Freiheitsglocke ) in Berlin , Germany , is a bell that was given as a gift from Americans to the city of Berlin in 1950 as a symbol of anti-communism , and was inspired by the American Liberty Bell . Since 1950, the bell has been located in the Rathaus Schöneberg , the former city hall of West Berlin .
14-578: The initiative to give Berlin such a bell was taken by the Crusade for Freedom , a propaganda campaign sponsored by the National Committee for a Free Europe , the organization which operated Radio Free Europe . The campaign was launched by U.S. general Dwight D. Eisenhower on Labor Day, 1950, with General Lucius D. Clay , later known as the "father of the Berlin airlift ", as its chairman. The stated purpose of
28-416: A "war bell", a "hunger bell" and a "death bell". SED central committee member Hans Jendretzky warned: "The rope of the death bell will become the gallows rope for those who ring it." The Governing Mayor of West Berlin, Ernst Reuter ( SPD ), declared that Germany "will never rest or relax until freedom will shine over the countries of Eastern Europe that are at present forced to live in slavery". The bell
42-832: A Free Europe , later known as Free Europe Committee , was an anti-communist Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) front organization , founded on June 1, 1949, in New York City , which worked for the spreading of NATO influence in Eastern Europe and to covertly destabilize Soviet Bloc countries. The committee was founded by Allen Dulles , later to be Director of Central Intelligence , in conjunction with DeWitt Clinton Poole . Early board members included Dwight Eisenhower , Lucius D. Clay , Cecil B. DeMille , Henry Luce , Mark Ethridge , Charles Phelps Taft II and DeWitt Wallace . From 1951 to 1952, Charles Douglas Jackson served as its president. The organization created and oversaw
56-653: Is rung daily for five minutes at noon, and at midnight on Christmas Eve and on New Year's Eve . A recording of the ringing was broadcast by RIAS , the American radio in West Berlin, every Sunday just before noon. These broadcasts have been continued by the successor of RIAS, Deutschlandfunk Kultur . In the radio broadcasts, the ringing of the bell is followed by an excerpt from the text of the "Declaration of Freedom" in German . The bell has also been rung on several special occasions:
70-558: The Ambassadors Plot to assassinate Vladimir Lenin in 1918 , which the press termed the Lockhart — Reilly plot, after two of its principal agents. Poole employed Xenophon Kalamatiano as his main field officer. Besides Sidney Reilly , the main Russian plotter was Boris Savinkov , who ran an anti-tsarist and anti-communist underground. The group was eventually uncovered by the cheka , and
84-588: The 1953 Uprising of June 17 , the 1956 Hungarian Uprising , the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the Reunification of Germany of 1990. In 2001, the bell was rung following the September 11, 2001 attacks , and thousands of Berlin citizens paid their respect at John-F.-Kennedy-Platz in front of the former city hall of West Berlin. National Committee for a Free Europe The National Committee for
98-924: The British and French to send the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) on the Polar Bear Expedition under British Command by General Edmund Ironside in Operation Archangel, part of the North Russia intervention , an Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War . General Jean Lavergne, chief of the French military mission to Russia was aided by Consul General fr:Joseph-Fernand Grenard , who attempted to recruit resistance armies to march on Bolshevik Moscow, and dispatched agents across Russia. After
112-537: The anti-communist broadcast service Radio Free Europe . CIA subsidies to the Free Europe Committee ended in 1971 which caused restructuring to its operations. The Free Europe Committee sent balloons with leaflets from West Germany to the Eastern Bloc countries. Each balloon was able to drop 100,000 leaflets. DeWitt Clinton Poole DeWitt Clinton Poole (October 28, 1885 – September 3, 1952 )
126-658: The bolsheviks responded by escalating the red terror . U.S. Secretary of state Robert Lansing allegedly initiated the plot after Lenin seized power in October 1917 and removed Russia from World War I, as part of a secret deal the Bolsheviks had struck with Germany. President Woodrow Wilson's foreign policy was publicly opposed to interference, but he told Lansing the Moscow coup had his "entire approval". In addition to instigating an attempted coup d'etat , they laundered money through
140-455: The campaign was to offer all Americans an opportunity to play a personal part in a demonstration of the "free world's determination to resist Communist aggression." The bell was conceived by Abbott Washburn and Nate Crabtree and designed by Walter Dorwin Teague . The 10-ton bell arrived from the British bell foundry of Gillett & Johnston to a ticker tape parade in New York City . It carries
154-590: The inscription "That this world under God shall have a new birth of freedom". The bell subsequently visited 26 American cities, and people in every state were encouraged to sign a "Declaration of Freedom". 16 million signatures from American citizens were collected and are enshrined in Berlin along with the bell. The bell then traveled to Berlin, and was permanently installed in the West Berlin city hall on United Nations Day , October 24, 1950. More than 400,000 Berliners filled
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#1732855325984168-527: The invasion failed, inquires were met with "evasive avoidance" in America. President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 indirectly denied the matter in claiming a "happy tradition of friendship for more than a century". President Ronald Reagan again denied it in the 80's in a public address to the Russian people, stating "our governments have had serious differences, but our sons and daughters have never fought each other in
182-408: The square before the city hall (now John-F.-Kennedy-Platz ) to witness the dedication ceremonies. General Clay gave a speech and pushed the button that started the bell ringing. Its tones were heard throughout East Berlin and into East Germany. The East German Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) launched a demonstration several miles from the dedication site, and party members denounced the bell as
196-906: Was an American intelligence officer. He served as U.S. Consul General in Moscow, and acted as America's spymaster in Revolutionary Russia . Poole arrived in Moscow in September 1917, two months before the Bolshevik Revolution , and left via Petrograd in late 1918 for the port of Archangelsk . He was "active in implementing U.S. policy, negotiating with the Bolshevik authorities, and supervising American intelligence operations that gathered information about conditions throughout Russia, especially monitoring anti-Bolshevik elements and areas of German influence." Historian Barnes Carr implicated Poole in
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