How many people will attend Obamas speech in Berlin?

@ Kruijs,

I've been to the Brandenburg gate, but I don't have a feel for the general capacity of the area you're describing, any chance you can provide some historical context for the size of past crowds??

The area reserved for the "masses" is the "17th June Street", not just the area at the Column, nor the Gate, itself.

There have been large scale events there, EURO 2008, World Cup 2006 (1 Million people), recently and in the past the "Love Parade", a house music festival (last one in Berlin: 2006, 1,2 Million).

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stra%C3%9Fe_des_17._Juni
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Parade#2006

Is Obama the Messiah. 1,000,000 is a lot of people. What did the Pope draw on his visits to the USA. The 1,000,000 man march on Washington was a sreatch. Does a US candidate have that kind of pull. I'll be impressed if it get to 1,000,000. 1/2 a mill would impress me.

I predict over 500,000. The Germans LOVE Obama. The population of Berlin is 3,405,000. There is 20 percent unemployment, that makes 681,000 with nothing to do but lots of time and money (unemployment benefits are high by US standards). I go to Berlin about twice a year and they sleep in very, very late. Most of my friends don't wake up til about noon or one, so that Obama's event doesn't start until 7pm is very smart. And Tiergarten Park is massive and the German authorities are apparently shutting down the street through the middle of the park. The weather on Thursday is going to be sunny and nearly 80 degrees: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day_f.shtml?world=0050

All these elements lead to high turnout. And Berliners are a high turn out kind of people from my experience there.

If David Hasselhoff were there to introduce Obama, he would probably have 2 million show up.

lol the germans love the Hoff!

He even claimed the Wall came down because he sung "I've been looking for freedom"

hilarious!

-.-* Sometimes I could cry what other nation think about the germans.... David Hasselhoff....

I think if Obamas team get a high number of people to got there, they won't ne more than 200.000, but I assume the number will be much lesser.

from cnn.com

Police estimated that more than 200,000 people came to watch the speech, according to The Associated Press.

I'm guessing that reggae artist Patrice and the rock band Reamonn helped bring a lot of the people to the event!

They are so popular that some folk would even suffer through a political speech at the end of the performance :-)

the mans speech was brilliant and over 200.000 where there ref mike amore

hope this don't turn into a spitzer. there will be lots of differnt numbers coming out. goodluck admin.

@curios - this man's speech strained facts or made up history whole cloth. I would say a "brilliant" speech needs to be factual!

Instead, he claimed that "many planes were forced to turn back" from the Berlin Airlift because of the bad weather, that "The size of our [US] forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army... All that stood in the way was Berlin.", that "you, the German people, tore down that wall" (as if they acted by themselves)... and a host of other things that were, at best, mischevious, or worse, bald faced lies

I would not call that brilliant

@notablenotices you don't like Obama, do you? Just asking :)

oh, notablenotices, you're right btw. I don't think his speech was "brilliant" either.

@ kruijs - Congratulations on a fine question!

I saw this photo -- thought it was pretty neat.
<http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/07/25/obamaberlin_wideweb__470x303,0.jpg>

(@ dieseldog -- while there are several numbers, they all fit within the "100,000 to less than 250,000" range, so I would anticipate an easy settlement ;-)

@kruijs - good guess :-)

By the way, I am not real excited about any candidate in this election, but Barack scares me!

@notablenotices - I'm with you neither candidate excites me be Barack scares the hell out of me