Barack Obama – Der schwarze Kennedy (Barack Obama – The black Kennedy) is a best-selling German-language

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 biography

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

 of President of the United States

President of the United States

The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....

 Barack Obama

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

 by journalist Christoph von Marschall

Christoph von Marschall

Christoph von Marschall is a German journalist working as the editor and as a United States correspondent in Washington D.C. for the daily Berlin newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. Before that, he was the director of the commentary section....

. The book was written by von Marschall while he spent much of 2007 travelling with Obama's presidential campaign

Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008

Barack Obama, then junior United States Senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10, 2007. On August 27, 2008, he was declared nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2008 presidential election...

 as a reporter for the Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 newspaper Der Tagesspiegel

Der Tagesspiegel

Der Tagesspiegel is a classical liberal German daily newspaper...

. It covers Obama’s life from his childhood, through his college studies, his time as a community organizer in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, and his political career including his 2008 presidential campaign. Von Marschall sums up his impressions of Obama by saying, “Seine Lebensgeschichte steht für den amerikanischen Traum.” (“His life story stands for the American Dream

American Dream

The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes a promise of the possibility of prosperity and success. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each...

.”)

The book's title, which implies a comparison between Obama and John F. Kennedy

John F. Kennedy

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....

, seemed gimmicky to some people when it was published in December 2007. However, in the following months many other Germans compared the two men and expressed hope that an Obama presidency would bring better relations between the United States and Europe

Euro-American relations

Relations between the European Union and the United States are the bilateral relations between the European Union and the United States of America . Due to the EU not having a fully integrated foreign policy, relations can be more complicated where the EU does not have a common agreed position e.g...

. Kennedy is very popular in Germany, with many recalling his famous statement, “Ich bin ein Berliner

Ich bin ein Berliner

"Ich bin ein Berliner" is a quotation from a June 26, 1963, speech by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in West Berlin. He was underlining the support of the United States for West Germany 22 months after the Soviet-supported East Germany erected the Berlin Wall as a barrier to prevent movement...

" (“I am a Berliner”) – given in West Berlin

West Berlin

West Berlin was a political exclave that existed between 1949 and 1990. It comprised the western regions of Berlin, which were bordered by East Berlin and parts of East Germany. West Berlin consisted of the American, British, and French occupation sectors, which had been established in 1945...

 in 1963 at the height of the Cold War

Cold War

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...

. Steffen Hallaschka, a moderator for Germany's NDR TV

Norddeutscher Rundfunk

Norddeutscher Rundfunk is a public radio and television broadcaster, based in Hamburg. In addition to the city-state of Hamburg, NDR transmits for the German states of Lower Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Schleswig-Holstein...

, said: "Germans in the '60s projected a lot of hope and fantasies on Kennedy. This is what they are doing with Obama.".

Barack Obama – Der schwarze Kennedy has been credited with helping to inspire interest in and support for Obama among people in Germany, with "der schwarze Kennedy" becoming a popular expression. Von Marschall, however, pointed out in some interviews that Obama’s Democratic Party primary

Democratic Party (United States) presidential primaries, 2008

The 2008 Democratic presidential primaries were the selection process by which voters of the Democratic Party chose its nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 U.S. presidential election...

 rival Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...

, are also popular in Germany and in the rest of Europe.