Culture: The sailing president

"With John Fitzgerald Kennedy's speech at the Berlin Wall on 26 June 1963 at the latest, the American president became one of the most popular statesmen of his time in Germany as well," reads the announcement of the museum. "To understand JFK, his actions and the magic that emanated from him, you also need to know the Kennedy family's passion for sailing and the sea."

Commitment to the sea

During the statesman's lifetime, this passion - sometimes neglected today in biographical retrospect - was no secret. In the year before his assassination on 22 November 1963, Kennedy put his commitment to the sea into words as a speaker at the America's Cup. "I think," he mused about the magical attraction of the sea to people, "it has something to do with the fact that we all come from the sea. And it's an interesting biological fact that we all have exactly the same amount of salt in our veins as the water in the ocean. We have the salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are bound to the sea. And when we return to it, whether under sail or as an observer on the shore, we feel that we are coming home."

Sailboat as a last greeting

The last greeting from the President of the United States of America one year later: a sailboat. The day after his assassination in Dallas, sketches of a sailboat that JFK had drawn during his stay there were found on a notepad in the Rice Hotel, just hours before his death.

The passion was inherited. The Kennedy family, descendants of Irish immigrants, owned a beach house in Hyannis on Cape Cod in the north-east of the USA. For his 15th birthday, JFK was given the dinghy "Victura", a small boat less than eight metres long with a gaff rig. John and his brothers Edward and Robert never missed an opportunity to race it.

As president, JFK had the yacht "Manitou" converted into a kind of floating white house from which he could also conduct his official business at sea.

John F. Kennedy was born 100 years ago on 29 May 1917. The Yachting Heritage Centre would like to pay tribute to the enthusiastic sailor with the exhibition "Kennedy - the sailing President".

Prices and opening hours

The museum is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11:00 to 18:00 and is closed on public holidays.

Admission costs €5.00 for individual visitors, €2.50 for group visitors (10 or more people) and €2.50 for school pupils, vocational school pupils, students, trainees, the unemployed, welfare recipients, FSJ volunteers and the severely disabled. Children under the age of 6, representatives of the press, necessary accompanying persons of severely disabled persons and members of the Yachting Heritage Centre e. V. are admitted free of charge.