BERLIN (AFP) - A museum honouring John F. Kennedy will open in Berlin in November near the spot from where the late US president tried to look into the communist east of the divided city in 1963.
The private museum will showcase about 1,000 photographs of Kennedy and some 10,000 documents and objects that marked his presidency or belonged to him and his family, organiser Sascha Melein said on Wednesday.
These include the crocodile leather Hermes briefcase Kennedy had with him when he was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963 and a black pillbox hat First Lady Jackie Kennedy wore on their visit to the Texan city.
"We have been collecting for years. We bought from auctions and from the Kennedy family themselves and private collectors donated objects to us," Melein told AFP.
The museum is the brainchild of one of Berlin's best known photo galleries, Camera Work. It will be called "The Kennedys" and open on November 11 in a building on Berlin's Pariser Platz.
The square lies in the former communist part of the capital, just behind the Brandenburg Gate where Kennedy in June 1963 tried to peer through the gate to the East, two years after the Berlin Wall went up.
His view was obscured by banners the East German regime had hung over the 18th century landmark.
"Somebody offered us this building. It is the best possible place for the museum. When Kennedy came to Berlin he stood in the West and tried to look into the East at the Brandenburg Gate but the communists had covered it," Melein said.
"We are giving him a museum that sits in the East but looks to the West."
He said Camera Work wanted to honour Kennedy because more than four decades later his visit still resonates with Germans and particularly residents of the capital.
"He is still seen in Berlin as a liberator. In a way, he is one of the most important people in the history of the city."
Kennedy pledged his solidarity with democratic West Germany in a defiant speech made in the capital June 26, 1963.
It included the memorable line "Ich bin ein Berliner", which has gone down in history as a gaffe because the term can also refer to a jam doughnut.
Camera Work has in recent years shown some of its photographs of Kennedy at exhibitions in Rome and Berlin.

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