A fun MLK fact, from http://www.aacvr-germany.org/:
"Dr. King’s visit to Cold War Berlin in September 1964 had been prepared by Willy Brandt’s 1961 visit to the U.S. and his meeting with King. Another important facilitator was Provost Heinrich Grüber, the former pastor at East Berlin’s St. Mary’s Church. Grüber had been an active opponent of the Nazi regime, gaining international attention when he testified during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the leading architects of the Holocaust, in Jerusalem in 1961. Invited by U.S. churches, Grüber began to travel across the U.S. delivering sermons in the following years. He also met with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and encountered the African-American struggle for civil rights firsthand. Perceiving this struggle as similar to his resistance to fascism, Grüber took up correspondence with Dr. King, already inviting him to Berlin in the course of 1963.
In his one and a half days in the city, Dr. King completed a whirlwind tour. He visited the Berlin Wall, where only the day before an East German had escaped to the West, provoking a gun battle between U.S. soldiers and East German border guards. King opened the city’s cultural festival that also included a memorial service for John F. Kennedy at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, delivered a sermon to more than 20,000 West Berliners at an outdoor arena, and was awarded an honorary degree by the Theological School of the Protestant Church."
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