Ernst Reuter

German politician who served as mayor of West Berlin from 1948 to 1953 during the time of the Cold War. Reuter's campaign advocating for the Western Allies airlift to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin led to him becoming only the second German postwar politician (after Konrad Adenauer) to be placed on the cover of Time magazine. He was titled "Herr Berlin".

During the Soviet-imposed Berlin Blockade (1948-1949), the western part of city was sustained by the Berlin airlift that was established by the American Military Governor, Lucius D. Clay. In response to the threat, the citizens in the western sectors had to come together. Ernst Reuter became their spokesman and leader, a symbolic figure of the Free Berlin. Memorable is Reuter's speech in front of the burned-out Reichstag building on 9 September 1948, facing a crowd of 300,000 where he appealed to the world not to abandon Berlin. In the election that was conducted in the western part of Berlin two months later, his popularity gave the SPD the highest win ever achieved by any party in a free election in Germany, with 64.5% of the vote. As mayor he formed a grand coalition government with the next two largest parties to demonstrate West Berlin's unity. Reuter's appeal to the West did not go unheard. The airlift saved the city from starvation.

Reuter was a younger half brother of Otto Sigfrid Reuter, a völkisch-religious ideologue. Ernst Reuter spent his childhood days in Leer. He attended the universities of Münster and Marburg where he completed his studies in 1912 and passed the examinations as a teacher. The same year he became a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD).

Reuter opposed Kaiser Wilhelm's regime at the start of the First World War. After being drafted, Reuter was sent to the Eastern front where he was wounded and captured by the Russians. During the 1917 October Revolution Reuter joined the Bolsheviks and organized his fellow prisoners into a soviet.